Nobody is paid and nobody owns anything, including the leadership.
Members receive no wage, stipend or allowance; housing, food, healthcare and education come from the common purse. The two businesses — Community Playthings and Rifton Equipment — turn over serious money, and no member has a personal claim on any of it.
Community Playthings makes wooden nursery furniture and Rifton Equipment makes mobility and seating equipment for children and adults with disabilities; both are Bruderhof-owned, staffed by members and used across Europe and North America. The money supports the communities and funds Plough Publishing, which puts out books and a quarterly magazine aimed well beyond the movement. Members are not paid, do not accumulate pensions, and hold no title to the property they live on. That arrangement produces the same asymmetry as among the Hutterites: a person who has given forty years to the community and leaves has no equity in it, and the fairness of departure settlements is one of the standing criticisms made by former members.
The same ground, other faiths
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