Rise and fall of small communities?
April 6, 2018 10:47 AM   Subscribe

I belong to a community (buddhist) in my city that has been struggling for the past year or two with regard to attendance at our programs and regular meetings. We are at a point now where this is clearly a trend and needs to be looked at and changes made in order for the group to move forward.

My questions are: what are the ways in which a community becomes stronger and more active, and how do participants develop a sense of ownership that leads to a greater sense of belonging? What are the ingredients to a successful community that we need to be addressing? (Both anecdotal experiences as well as more learned approaches to community building are most welcome).
posted by nanook to Society & Culture (11 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Hey, hope this doesn't get banned for self-linking, but I know the guy who wrote this book about communities and it has been pretty helpful.
posted by bq at 10:52 AM on April 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


Anecdotally: Communities wax and wane naturally. People are attracted to a thriving community, so when you are at a period of sparse attendance, it's difficult to attract new participants. One strategy is to partner with another organization or activity. This increases visibility (might get new members) and can make existing members more enthusiastic. For example, the group could participate in an earth day cleanup or co-host an interfaith discussion. Second, leadership shouldn't be afraid to delegate work to members but make sure it is manageable and you let them know you value their contributions - don't micromanage. People will feel ownership if they contribute. Third, even if your group has "work" to do, make sure to provide enjoyable opportunities for socializing where members relax and get to know each other. Not everyone will like socializing, but it can be motivating for people who do.
posted by beyond_pink at 11:05 AM on April 6, 2018 [7 favorites]


On a practical level: Does the community use social media, Meet Up, etc? As well as being a good way to reach new people, these are also useful for helping occasional visitors still feel part of the community, and make it easier for them to feel they can return if they’ve been away for a while, reducing member loss over time.
posted by penguin pie at 12:14 PM on April 6, 2018


Is it a "community," or is it an organization? It sounds like an organization (regular meetings, programs). You might find helpful resources by searching on the term "organizational life cycle."

Among the choices beyond_pink mentions, be sure to put "merge with another, similar but healthier org" or "fold the org and distribute the assets (if any) to orgs with a similar mission" on the table. Too often, nonprofits and community orgs do not consider folding and redirecting their energies when it could really be the option that best uses the scarce resources of time, space, attention, and money. Sometimes an emotional attachment to wishing it was bigger, more thriving, etc is the main obstacle - but sometimes, an initiative is over and has done its work, or has failed to engage new champions, or the landscape has adapted around it and other entities are now absorbing the energy once available for this. In such cases it can be a positive move to let go. Non-attachment!
posted by Miko at 12:15 PM on April 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


Make a list of the people who have drifted away. Call them individually and ask them why. Ask them for suggestions on how to make the community more attractive.
posted by valannc at 12:28 PM on April 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


I have anecdotal experiences with a Buddhist community, and one of the questions that should be asked if you haven't yet is "What are possible barriers to attendance?" and "How truly welcoming are we?"

Our community was always fairly-to-moderately healthy during my time there but I always had concerns about both questions, especially the former. People are busy and most households with children have two working parents and many households have one or both parents working multiple jobs. I find that Buddhist communities tend to expect a pretty big time commitment even for regular programming. This may not be the case with yours, but it's pretty common. If people get the impression that they aren't welcome to just drop in for a short time whenever they can, they'll stop showing up entirely.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:28 PM on April 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


The first thing that popped into my head was to wonder whether or not there was a shared goal, or a few shared goals, that are generally agreed upon?
posted by jbenben at 12:50 PM on April 6, 2018


How welcoming are you to families? Not in your mission or brochures, but the times your programming occurs, the accommodations you have for people with kids and jobs, the tolerance of children being present?

The two quasi-intentional social justice organizations I've been a part of have lost my participation and attendance because they were unwelcoming to families. Now, on the surface they were the most open and accepting places, their mission was admirable, and they would describe themselves as open too. But their membership was predominantly 60+, and the decisions and assumptions about programming (content and logistics) required starting from the reality of retired white people with a lot of time and some disposable income. They were not attuned to the reality of a dual-income, or single parent, or time-stretched family, and over time I felt like the "values" of the organization were those that provided virtue-signaling opportunities for the ageing, white, membership. Several times they ran parenting seminars weeknights at dinnertime, without childcare, despite requests to aim for weekend days with childcare. My sense is that they wanted to feel good about offering programs rather than help people.

Change was not just difficult; change was dealt with patronizingly as threatening to the "good of the community functioning."....a community that was losing members steadily.
posted by cocoagirl at 1:18 PM on April 6, 2018 [7 favorites]


I recently decided to leave a small advisory board in my community because the board had zero interest in new members' input on how to engage and energize the community in which I live all the while having extremely low community participation. If that is an issue for your group I would suggest being open to participants having a role if they choose to do so and actually encouraging it.
posted by waving at 1:51 PM on April 6, 2018


Be aware that communities unconsciously flock. Members start imitating each other, and this strengthens social bonds but also increases intolerance toward other modes/voices/attitudes/thoughts/types, and thereby repels nonconformists.

The person in charge (who is - whether s/he likes it or not - the model for the conformity) needs to decide how to tinker with that choice. Either go out of the way to embrace discordant voices/attitudes/personality types/every-other-distinguishing-factor, in order to create a richly broad community, or focus in on the one-pointedness of it in order to create a tightly-bound but outsider-intolerant group. The natural personal instinct is to find something really really appealing in the "flavor" of the group, because that flavor is inevitably the flavor of its leader (even if the leader feels humble/non-authoritarian/open-minded; it's really out of the leader's hands).

Those were two short paragraphs, but there's a lot there, so I'd consider deep pondering. Consider what end result you want to produce, then reverse-engineer from there, understanding the two branchings I describe above.

Finally, if you do aim for broad/diverse, trolls and asshole will appear in order to test your resolve. You WILL need, at some point, to draw a hard line leaving certain people on the outs. Be prepared, especially if your self-image is wrapped up in your tolerance and acceptance. Communities (even spiritual ones) are not all rainbows and pixie dust, and you will need to exert parental authority and make people angry. If not, you'll discover that infinite toleration and acceptance means pressing hot coals and cancer to one's bosom, to the detriment of the community, just to try to prove something to yourself.

Lots of hard experience behind this....
posted by Quisp Lover at 2:00 PM on April 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


I've done a lot of reading and learning about what makes groups thrive or not, as well as a lot of group-building myself, as part of my previous career building local activist groups. So some of this will resonate, some may not (a lot of it is based on research of lots of different kinds of groups, from churches to sports leagues):

- Successful groups are constantly bringing new people in. I can see how this might be a bit challenging for a spiritual group, as you may be worried about looking like you are evangelizing or even a cult! But: is it easy for people to find out about you and your events? Do you have a good website that is optimized for people to find it through googling things like "buddhism [YOUR CITY]"? Do you have a presence on Facebook and do you post events there? Do you advertise events in other ways, through community event calendars? Are members encouraged to invite friends and family? (again, this encouragement should be done lightly!)

- Even more importantly, successful groups make people feel welcome when they come to their first event. There are many ways you can do that: nametags for everyone, volunteers whose job it is to greet new faces and introduce them around, discouraging cliquishness at public events. And then there should be a way for people to opt in to staying involved - ie, they should at least be able to sign up for the email list. A really good group oriented towards being welcoming to new people will give people opportunities to be more engaged from the beginning. Maybe that's a monthly "what's this all about?" meeting for new people. Maybe it's giving them opportunities to volunteer from the beginning. Not every new person will be keen to be that engaged at the start, but it's good to have the opportunities there.

- Existing member engagement: If I had to guess, I'd wager that there is a small group of people (like 3-5 at the most) who do 90% of the work, right? This can work for a while, but eventually strangles the growth of a group, as everyone else feels nonessential. If this is the case, this small group needs to get together (hopefully you are one of them!) and come up with a plan for dividing up the work of the group. Figure out some broad areas of work and identify other members who can take them over, with your support. Things like publicizing events, providing refreshments, membership management, etc. It may take a while to find people to help with these things if everyone is used to a small group doing everything, but that's where new members can come in handy. They won't know it hasn't always been like this.

- Transparency in leadership: One problem with the "small group runs everything" model is that it's really hard for people to see who's making decisions and how they're making them. This makes it hard for people to plug in if they want to help out, and it makes it hard for people to bring up suggestions or complaints (not everyone wants to have or is able to take a leadership role, but they should still be able to have some sort of voice in decision-making). So I'd suggest having either an elected board or leadership committee, where everyone has a job. This may seem overly formal, but it only needs to be a few people who meet once every month or two. The key is that everyone else knows who they are, how to reach them, what they do, and how to become a member if they want to.

- Understanding and being open to adopting what your community wants. This is both existing members and people you'd like to have join. So often, groups run by volunteers end up being run according to how the leaders want to do things. Which makes sense, but it can lead to people just kind of drifting away if it's not what they were hoping for. For ex. I joined a community chorus two years ago and there was a lot I liked about it. But it was 100% run as a benign dictatorship by the chorus director. I didn't like her song choices, and there were some things I really didn't like about how she ran the chorus (as much as I like her as a person). So I drifted away. In and of itself, that's not a bad thing - not every group will be right for every person. But I noticed I was not the only person who drifted - the chorus is a lot smaller than it was when I joined two years ago. I wonder how many people, like me, just shrugged and figured it wasn't the thing for them. But what if she, at the beginning of every season, asked if anyone had any requests? Or gave us a list of songs to vote on? Some of us may have stayed.

I would suggest making a really big effort to find out what people are looking for from this community. Are you offering it? Try to figure out what people in your broader community might want as well - maybe by asking on neighborhood facebook groups, or by doing "test-balloon" events to see if people are interested. Reach out to people who have drifted away as well. Though that might not be as successful - a lot of people will probably just say something like "oh, my life just got crazy" which may well be true, but of course people will be more likely to make time for things that they see as valuable.

- On a related note: does your leadership, official and unofficial, look the way you want your membership to look? ie, are you in a young, racially diverse city, but all your leaders are white Baby Boomers? If your leadership is all one kind of person (ie, all white men, or all women of a certain class and age group), it is going to be reeaaally hard to grow and maintain membership outside that group.

Whew, that was my download on group-building. Hope it's helpful!
posted by lunasol at 3:18 PM on April 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


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