Get Together: How to build a community with your people

Pay attention to feedback, and try to gauge your people’s interest objectively. If no one wants to repeat this activity with you, that’s a red flag. It’s not a community if participants only show up once.

Proactively seek stories from exceptional members, then share them widely to inspire others to join the fun.

Review Pinpoint your people If you’re going to build a community with a group of people, you’ll need to know who they are and identify a purpose that will bring them together. Before getting caught up in what you’ll do together, try to answer the following questions: Who do you want to get together? As an individual . . . Who do I care most deeply

Members realize their community’s purpose through the thing that they do together.

If you want to spark your own community, you’ll need to first pinpoint your people. Find your kindling—those early allies who care about what you care about enough to manifest your idea for a community into an actual gathering of human beings. Though there may not be many of them, the first people you involve are consequential. They will set the to

Scott Heiferman, co-founder of Meetup, told us during a workshop, “people show up for the meetup but they come back for the people.”

People participate in communities for a variety of reasons—to sing, to lose weight, to read stories that speak to them. But regardless of what drives people to show up for the first time, the relationships they form are what will bring them back.

In order to make sure that your community’s purpose is grounded in your people’s needs, and that it expresses what you can accomplish together, consider: 1. What do my people need more of? 2. What’s the change we desire? 3. What’s the problem only we can solve together?