Work quota
The hours a member is expected to contribute each week. Whether anybody counts them says more about a community than the number does.
Everything on this page is checkable on a visit, and none of it is checkable from a website. Ask for numbers rather than impressions — how many hours, how many meals, how many people at the last meeting — and ask three different members the same question. The variance between their answers is usually more informative than any of the answers.
A work quota is the amount of work a member owes the community — usually stated in hours a week or a month. Grounds, maintenance, cleaning shared rooms, cooking on the rota, administration, sitting on a circle.
Two to six hours a week is typical in a settled community with private finances. Income-sharing communities ask for far more because the work is the economy: Twin Oaks sets 38.5 hours a week, covering both its businesses and its domestic areas.
Counted, or trusted?
Communities split into three rough camps, and which one you are joining matters more than the number.
Counted. Hours are logged, usually as labour credits . Fair, transparent, administratively heavy, and prone to feeling like a timesheet in a household.
Stated but not counted. A quota exists in the agreements ; nobody audits it. Most common, and it works exactly as long as the group is willing to have an awkward conversation with somebody who is not pulling their weight.
Neither. No stated expectation. This does not mean less work happens; it means the work lands on whoever cannot stand to see it undone, which within a few years is a specific and resentful list of names.
The question worth asking
Not “what is the quota?” but “what happens when someone does not meet it?”
Every community has an answer and most have not written it down. A rule with no stated consequence is a preference, and members work out which is which inside a year.
Sources & further reading
- 1 What daily life actually looks like — the week, concretely
- 2 Twin Oaks Community — FAQs — 38.5 hours a week, and what counts
Written by EcoHubs members, with AI assistance for drafting and editing, and reviewed by a person before publication. Facts are checked against the sources listed; anything we could not verify is marked. How this is written
Related terms
An hour of work counted against a member's quota. The accounting that lets a community treat cooking and earning as equally valuable.
The noticing, remembering and smoothing that keeps a community running and never appears on any rota. It distributes itself unevenly.
The written rules a community has consented to. Distinct from values: agreements say what happens, and what follows when it does not.