Finding Volunteers for Your Meetup Group

This blog post was orientally posted to the Guildflow product blog, which will soon be shutdown.

One of the biggest milestones of any meetup or community is when the group evolves beyond: “Mike’s group” to “our group”. (Substitute your own name for mine. 😀)

To achieve this, group responsibilities need to be spread out, and for that you need volunteers. Some organizers will experience friction getting people to volunteer their time for the group but in my own experience part of this friction is lack of specific details.

The easiest way to find volunteers for your meetup group is to ask for help. Be specific and define meaningful, approachable tasks that are easy for group regulars to take on. Find small tasks, with low commitment levels to help spur momentum.

Take for example, my own Philly Elixir group, which is a small local group. Recently, I found myself with a meeting agenda where I’d be doing the majority of the talks and demos. Not wanting to hear my own voice all night I tapped the shoulder of a meeting regular and asked if they could take on the industry news section of the agenda, highlighting some of the recent improvements to Elixir in version 1.11. It was a small task that helped take some of the pressure off my shoulders and ultimately strengthen the group health by having more people involved.

Beyond talks and event presentations there are lots of small tasks you can define and use to help draw out volunteerism within you group. Some examples:

• Marketing outreach to other groups.
• Social media posting.
• Write post-meeting notes.
• Picking up event food.
• Help setup the room or AV needs.
• Group photographer.
• Website maintainer.

What are some other example of volunteerism can you think of? Let me know for a future post update.