Starting from Scratch #5

by Raven

5: Throwing Spaghetti

How do you find people for a community when there isn’t yet a community?  

I’ve been using a scattershot approach or what I’ve heard as “throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks”.  I’d love to tell you a no-fail method for finding potential communards but I haven’t found one yet.  Having a functioning community with interesting folks is a good way to attract people, but you have to start somewhere and since my first step is always finding the people, the question is how do you find folks, and at this point, my answer is “any way that I can”.

It’s actually an approach that makes some sense.  Since I don’t know what will attract folks, I think that trying lots of different things means using a variety of ways to reach the people I’m looking for.  In particular, I think that this is a better method for times like now when things are less stable and what worked in the past may not be what works now.  I’ve heard it phrased as “If at first you don’t succeed, try something else”.

So, what have I tried? 

I’ve put ads on ic.org and in Communities magazine.  I’ve also written an article about my search (called “Starting from Scratch, Yet Again”) that was just published in Communities magazine (Spring 2023, Issue #198).  I’ve talked about it to visitors I met at Glomus, to folks I saw at Acorn, and to people I knew at the Ganas Community.  I put something on our regional co-op email list.  I went to the Collaborative Living Conference in Maine, and the Queer Gathering and the Communities Conference at Twin Oaks in Virginia.  I gave a workshop on Collaborative Community Design at the Communities Conference and later at Ganas.

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From the workshop at the Communities Conference

In addition, I joined ICmatch, which is kind of a dating service but instead of trying to match up with a romantic partner, you connect with communities and people looking for communities. I also just joined Community Finders Connect, a Facebook page that tries to connect people with communities. And someone I know who runs a ‘clubhouse’ to talk about communities had me on to talk about income sharing communities.

And, of course, this blog and all that I write here (including this post) are more ways of getting myself out there.

Importantly, I have responded to everyone who has expressed interest to me and talked with them and tried to find out just how interested they were.  I met with anyone who was nearby and had multiple emails and sometimes phone calls with folks further away.  That included folks that were interested in what seemed to me off-the-wall things and the person who literally talked at me on a phone call for forty-five minutes and gave me little chance to respond.  It has been a lot of trial and error for what has not been very many results.

But I intend to keep trying to find other ways to reach out.  I’m still trying to think of different ways to attract folks.  What avenues haven’t I tried?  Who am I really trying to reach and is there a better way to reach them?

As I said at the beginning, I still haven’t found any easy ways to find the folks I’m looking for.  If there was, I’d share them.  But here’s the only way I know:  Be creative.