How to Start a Community

An excerpt from our new course-in-development!

Want to know a secret?

For the last 9 months, I’ve been working on a project dear to my heart. It has moved slowly, continuously changing forms as we try to find the right fit for a topic precious to all our creators. Now, however, we are finally in the writing and creation phase.

The project is a course on how to build strong, sustainable hyper-local community.

We’ll be announcing the website at the end of this month, and hope to do a beta test in the fall of first the materials (writing + interviews) and then the full course.

However, beautiful Substack supporters, I plan to give you lots of teasers before then. Here is an excerpt from one of the first modules of the course on how to vision and/or find a community of your own.

P.S. If this project inspires you, you have a community you lead or are part of, and you want to help - please reach out!! We could use more stories and resources to include.

Thing 1: Are You My Community?

📌 “Forming a new community is like simultaneously trying to start a new business and begin a marriage — and is every bit as serious as doing either. It requires many of the same planning and financial skills as launching a successful business enterprise, and the same capacities for trust, good will, and honest, kind interpersonal communication as marrying your sweetheart.” - Diane Leafe Christian

The first step in starting your community is meeting a need. A specific need.

If you’re a gatherer, I’m sure you’ve had the experience of putting a great event out there and…having nobody show up. You tried to serve, but the people you tried to serve weren’t having it.

This is usually because you didn’t catch the wave of their identity or their needs. You were either too specific and your target group was too small, and/or already met in their needs. Or you were too general, and people couldn’t see themselves in your offering. Or, you were meeting a need of your own, without considering others’ desires.

For example, just the other week, one of our writers put on an event called Fight Lab. It was a cool concept: a place where people could come and practice difficult conversations through role-play. We hold it every week online, and thought people would love an in-person version.

But - we weren’t specific about who “people” are, or why they would need a Fight Lab at this specific point in their lives. So, we got a lot of interest on Facebook. But nobody showed up. We wanted to hold the event because we thought it would be cool. We failed to consider who our potential audience was, or what THEY needed.

Say you have a need for more friends. You want a community to fill that need. You get specific about a need in the world that you think isn’t being met, perhaps for bikers, Democrats, or moms to gather. But then…you don’t feel fulfilled.

The problem may be that you’re not a biker, a Democrat, or a mom. If the door to your community is wide open all the time, or if you’re not specific about what you need, you risk ending up somewhere you really don’t fit in.

Who should you build for?

If you want a specific community that is also general enough to meet your needs, the most important thing to look for is an identity intersection. This is where a specific group intersects with a specific need.

According to expert community founder Rich Bartlett, who you’ll see in a couple of the videos in this course, the best online communities are “those for {x} who do {y}”. In other words, “bikers who like hiking”.

For in person communities, however, I’ve found that the strongest communities tend to be the ones “for {x} who need (or want) {y}”. Think:

• Moms who need a place to socialize without their kids

• Entrepreneurs who need a place to meet each other without the awkwardness of networking

• People in your neighborhood who want a reason to meet their neighbors

Finding and fulfilling these needs will work best if you are a mom, entrepreneur, or neighborhood resident, respectively.

Examples:

• Toastmasters started as a community for men who needed better public speaking skills. (They didn’t open up to women applicants until almost 50 years after their start!)

• Boy Scouts was a community for boys who needed connection and nature skills (or whose parents wanted them to have those).

• Alcoholics Anonymous was a community for self-described addicts who needed to stop drinking.

The first woman president (and one of the first female members) inducted into Toastmasters, in 1973. Helen Blanchard originally joined Toastmasters using the name “Homer Blanchard” to be admitted.

NOTA BENE: It is very hard to create community for a group you do not represent. If you want to do this, find at least one partner who does represent the identity and/or demographic of the group you want to serve, and follow their lead on anything cultural or social. We’ll talk later about roles in community. Don’t worry: even if you’re not the culture creator, there will still be plenty for you to do!

JOURNAL

📖 Identifying Intersections

Journal on 2-5 intersections you might like to serve. Ask yourself:

1. What demographics or personality types do I consider myself part of?

2. What demographics or personality types would I want to serve? Which do I care most deeply about?

3. What needs do they have?

4. What needs might I want to help fulfill?

Make sure you brainstorm all the options possible in questions 1 and 3, even if they are demographics and needs you might not like to serve. You might find some that surprise you, when you allow yourself an open field of curiosity.

More Ideas

Here’s an excerpt from Huffpost, written by Amol Sarva, with some other good ideas on what intersection you might want to address with your community:

• Fix What's Wrong: Maybe you're interested in an area inundated with bad networking options. For example, I haven't seen one sizable group that hosts recruiter events with consistency in New York. Figure out what they're doing wrong and do it right.

• Connect Around Shared Experiences: Perhaps there's something different about you that doesn't have a local community. Are you a European Swift developer? Or maybe a West Coast marketing transplant? Find specific similarities in groups over which you can immediately form a bond.

• Segment An Existing Group: Search at your existing networks and find a niche. Maybe you have a strong alumni network, but do they have a focus on tech? It's much easier and less competitive to build community at the cross-section of multiple interests.

• Change The Mode of Connection: Stop meeting over demo days, happy hours, and panels. For instance, there used to be a Startup Hockey Meetup where people at startups just got together to play NHL '94 on Sega.

• Start A Junto: Ben Franklin did it, why can't you?

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Thing 2: Creating from Scratch vs Branching Out

Something that most beginning community leaders don’t think about is that you don’t have to create your community from scratch.