Every November our members choose the people who run Strong Towns Detroit. Three of the nine board seats are open this year, and we’d like you to think seriously about taking one.

We have no staff and no director, and nobody here draws a salary. Whatever this organization does in 2027 gets decided by the nine people who end up on this board. There’s no good reason one of them shouldn’t be you.

What you’d bring

Most volunteering means showing up when somebody else asks. A board seat is different. You’re the one deciding what gets asked.

Whatever you’re already good at, we have a use for it. If you can write, you help us explain to a skeptical neighbor why their property taxes, the pothole on their street, and the empty lot on the corner are all the same problem. If you’re good with people, you’re the reason a council office picks up the phone when we call. If you can organize, you turn a mailing list into thirty people testifying at a public hearing, which is about thirty more than usually show up.

And if what you have is simply knowing your own neighborhood — which intersection is dangerous, which house has sat empty since 2011, who on your block actually gets things done — that’s worth more around this table than another planning degree.

The transit millage is the clearest example of what that adds up to. It passed in August with 67% of the vote countywide and 81% in Detroit, and it passed because people knocked doors through a Michigan summer and talked to their neighbors about buses. Somebody had to decide that was how we’d spend those months, and that decision got made at a board meeting.

What you’d get back

You’ll learn this city from the inside, which isn’t something you can do from a Facebook group. You’ll sit across from council members, planners and developers, and you’ll find out how a project really gets approved here, why it takes three years, and where the pressure points are. Some of what you learn will make you angry. Most of it will make you useful.

You’ll also be on the hook for three years, which is long enough to start something and still be here when it finally works.

How it works

1. Fill out the interest form. It’s short, and it doesn’t commit you to anything.
2. We’ll confirm your membership is current and answer anything you want to ask.
3. Write a few sentences about who you are and why you’re running.
4. We send every candidate’s statement out to the membership.
5. Members vote on November 17. Everyone gets up to three picks, and the top three win.

Not sure yet? Email hello@strongtownsdetroit.org, or find one of us at the next monthly meeting and ask what the job is really like. We’ll tell you the annoying parts too.