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gather community newsletter 01. 

If you signed up for this email newsletter a few months ago and were wondering why you hadn't received anything, it wasn't you... it was me. #imnotjustsayingthat

Starting this new business sent me into gleeful wonder + intense workload as I oriented myself. Things now settled & I'm excited to be on this journey with you.
Hi friend, 

This week marks the first full week of June, and also the first week of this official newsletter for Gather Community Consulting.

I want to use this here newsletter to start a conversation with you, sparked by the work I do with my clients to build their communities alongside them. I want to share when I make missteps, when I triumph, and where I need a helping hand. And I plan to share resources, academic research, and iterative thinking with you about gathering people, as weird and wonderful as they are.

To kick things off, I want to share the one thing that all my projects these last six months have had in common, no matter what size of organization I'm working with: start small. 

This has surprised me quite a bit. Starting small is often harder, more frustrating, harder to sell inside organizations, and more challenging than planning a big, fancy community launch. It's hard to start small in a working world that often begs us: make an impact! grow faster! do more! hit your sometimes totally arbitrary KPIs! 

But there are several reasons why it's better to start small: 
  • You make mistakes on a small scale and fix them by listening and apologizing, setting a feedback loop in place as you grow
  • You can get to know everyone, helping you and them feel seen
  • What you launch is imperfect, which makes it possible for your members to see where they can help make the community better (this is a major community-creating benefit of the oft-destructive "move fast and break things" mentality)
  • You can intentionally curate the culture
Starting small means you have to lay down your ego. It means listening and changing, not identifying too much with the ways things must be. It means making room for co-created ideas. It means laying a foundation for future success. 

Many successful, now-enormous communities are launched small, through one small event (like CreativeMornings was in 2008, now in 186 cities around the world, or like Pinterest's meetups back in 2010).

Communities run into fatal problems when they grow too quickly without grounding in well-researched guiding principles (this is what caused the initial downfall of Pantsuit Nation). The best testing ground for these principles is actually in small, safe spaces, where it's okay to make mistakes, apologize, and charge forward.

If you don't have a community yet, what is the fastest and smallest way to test your community idea? Try a sign-up form and a free platform.

If you have a large community, how can you launch something small and curated inside of it that will connect you to a subset of valuable members? Pantsuit Nation, for instance, could have started a small task force of 15 experienced community organizers right as their proverbial ship was sinking. 

Build small today so your long long-term impact can be enormous.
How are you building small communities or small projects inside your communities? Reply to this email and we'll discuss. 

Keep Going. We need you. 


Your friendly neighborhood community builder 💛
Carrie

P.S. I'm so grateful to have you read this newsletter. Having you part of this early group fills my heart with immense joy and desire to keep putting good work out in the world. Let's do this. Also, you're amazing.
Copyright © 2018 Gather Community Consulting, All rights reserved.


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