Meetups & Mixers Hosting Guide

Part IV: Managing Community

In time, many social events become the centerpoint of a community that develops around them. Community management is no small topic; in this section, we’ll focus on the question of what platform to use to organize and communicate with your attendees, as well as ideas for fostering community.

Platforms and Communication

You need to be able to communicate with attendees in order to share the details of your upcoming event and invite them back in the future. There are a number of methods you can use to do so, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Here are some top options, with pros and cons for each – though of course this is not an exhaustive list.

  • 👍 Pros

    • Simple tools for creating events and inviting people

    • Mass adoption – meet people where they’re at without requiring them to download/learn a new platform.

    • Tools to create and maintain community between events

    👎 Cons

    • Max of 500 event invites per person – so as your event grows, you may need to get other people to help you send out invitations.

    • Unethical company on like a bajillion levels.

    • Decreasing popularity, particularly among younger generations.

    📣 Tips:

    • Once you get some momentum, you can create a group – this creates some continuity among attendees (or, put another way, community!) between events. The “Bay Area Poly Happy Hour” Facebook group, which hosts monthly happy hours in San Francisco and the East Bay, has 5,000 attendees!

    • Make sure to make your event and group private, so that you don’t expose anyone who isn’t open about their non-monogamous identity.

    • It’s also a good idea to put up some basic membership questions that people need to answer to join the group. The “Bay Area Poly Happy Hour” group asks the following three questions: “What does ENM mean to you? How did you find us? What are you hoping to find?”

    • You can use the group to create other community opportunities. The “Bay Area Poly Happy Hour” group admins post monthly threads such as an introductions post (for new members), promotions post (for people to promote their own projects, events, art, etc.), housing post (for people offering or seeking housing).

  • 👍 Pros

    • Mass adoption – everyone has an email address, and folks are usually fairly comfortable giving it out to trusted sources.

    • Many free and cheap options for managing your list and sending emails (MailChimp is free up to 500 contacts / 2,500 monthly emails).

    • High degree of control – you own the email list and have total control over the content you send to folks.

    👎 Cons

    • More work, since you’ll need to collect emails at the event, manage your list, configure emails, etc.

    • One-way communication – No way for attendees to chat with one another without the list getting spammy.

    • No way to collect RSVPs without using a secondary platform

    • Risk of people missing out (not seeing the email sign-up sheet at your event; mistyping their email when you adding them to your contacts; not seeing/opening the email).

    📣 Tips:

    • Take pains to collect folks’ email addresses! In addition to posting a sign-up form by the entrance, you might send a volunteer around the event to make sure everyone sees the sign-up.

    • Be super clear about what you’ll be using their email for, and how frequently they can expect to hear from you.

    • Send a welcome email to all your new subscribers thanking them for attending your event, and telling them what they can expect next.

    • Create a way for people to subscribe outside of your events, such as a sign-up form. This will make it possible for people to invite their friends and grow the community!

    • Don’t be spammy, but don’t send just one invitation email per event. A good communication flow starts with a post-event email announcing the next event date; a reminder two weeks before the event; a reminder-week of, and the day before.

    • Seriously, don’t be spammy. A large email list is a valuable asset, and other event organizers may ask to promote their own events to your list. If you don’t have your subscribers explicit consent to reach out to them about other events, don’t do so!

  • There are a number of ways to communicate with event attendees via text. We like the Signal app, which makes it easy to start a group chat and easily invite people using a link or QR code.

    This is a good way to communicate with guests leading up to your event.

    👍 Pros

    • Many of the same pros as email: mass adoption, greater control, etc.

    • Generally, text has the highest open/read rate of any communication channel.

    • Two-way communication is easy one-on-one or with groups.

    👎 Cons

    • Many of the same cons as email: complexity, potential for spam if too many people are using the list, etc.

    • People may be more hesitant to share their phone number than their email or Facebook.

  • Plura (FKA Bloom) is a community and events app centered on queer, kinky, and non-monogamous users. The app is available on iOS and Android; their website is https://heyplura.com/

    👍 Pros

    • Woman-owned, queer/kinky/non-monogamy friendly company!

    • Simple event tools with ways for attendees to chat with one another before the event and engage in an event group chat

    • A variety of ENM community events and chat topics, along with people who are interested in finding more.

    👎 Cons

    • Requires people to download and sign up for a new app.

    • No way to maintain community/communication between events.

    📣 Tips

    • For some quick and simple steps to hosting your own event, see Plura’s Guide here.

  • If your community is large enough, it may be helpful to use a platform such as Slack or Discord to give members threads where they can discuss specific topics. Discord is free to use and is growing in popularity as a community platform; however, it requires a bit more technical know-how to set up and manage. Slack is simpler, but you’ll need to pay for a membership to access messages 90 days old:

    Sample Channel Ideas:

    • Event Chat

    • General Chat

    • Local Chats

    • Topic Chats (Meet Ups / Socials, Book Club, Free Stuff Exchange, Offers/ Requests, Game Chats (Video Games & Board Games), LGBTQIA+ Chat, Non-Monogamy Chat, Personals, Housing, Memes, Pets, PolyAm Parents, Support, Trans Humans, BIPOC Chat, Travel, Neurodivergent)

  • There are a growing number of tools for managing events and communities.

    Platforms like Partiful and Luma are fre to use and are great for event invitations, but don’t have community features.

    Tools like Mighty Network and GroupFlow allow you to create robust community platforms, including events, but cost money to use.

Our suggestion: Ultimately, the best approach might be a little bit of all of the above. For example, you might build an email list that you can use to send out your event invitations, while also putting your event on Plura, creating an event on Facebook, and creating a Discord server or Facebook group to grow your community.

Building Your Team

Even if you start an event successfully on your own, finding reliable, engaged, socially-connected co-leads from within your attendees will make it easier to run the event long term.

Having multiple event leads has a number of perks. It means that if one person needs to sit out an event (whether planned or unplanned), someone else is there to make sure the event goes forward. Having multiple points of view with regard to planning and problem solving helps better ideas emerge.

As you build your team, be conscious that you’re all clear on who’s responsible for what, how decisions are made, and so on. Make sure that everyone’s time and input is respected. This is a great opportunity to put those non-monogamy skills – like clear communication, stating boundaries and desires, etc. – into practice!