This is SO timely. I’ve been trying to put myself out there more, since my son is grown and I work from home all day. I volunteered for a toy drive last Saturday that I was scared about doing (didn’t know anyone), and I almost didn’t go. I met an amazing woman who is in charge of membership at our local YMCA, and she said they needed a Book Club organizer and my eyes lit up. I’m meeting today about that. I cannot tell you what a jumpstart that one Saturday morning has been for my heart and soul. I love the words of encouragement about exposure therapy!
WOW, what an inspiring organization! If anyone else is a fan of the Betsy-Tacy books, this sounds exactly like all the clubs they're always joining and starting in there. And for a more modern analog, it reminds me a ton of my college marching band - which involved no musical requirements and promised 'two hundred instant friends'. We've got an active alumni gang and still get together every year, and honestly, it's the little rituals - the callbacks, the heckling - that makes me feel the most warm and fuzzy inside.
The Betsy-Tacy books! Are you a member of the Betsy-Tacy society? This is a plethora of women from far and wide who have all connected through their love of these books! You can join, or just follow them on Facebook for now. (I should say “us”
because I’ve been a member for years and have met many amazing women as a result)
THANK YOU so much, AHP, for letting me go on and on about our little club!
I just want to add recognition by name for two of my fellow Board Directors: Club Historian Rachel Skytt for fact checking me, and my dear friend Sabrina Parke who is the reason I even know about this (nearly) century-old institution! And photo credit to Larry Underhill (Melissa Villaseñor in the buffet line) and Charly Shelton (coffee cup).
Thanks so much for sharing the club with us all, Bri! I'd love to hear about anything you do to make new people feel welcome at their first or second breakfast. Are there any rituals associated with welcoming newbies?
It doesn't sound like it happens with your wonderful club, but I know I've certainly had the experience of going to an established group for the first time and feeling excluded because everyone else knew each other. How do you encourage existing members to connect with new folks and get them feel like a part of it?
What a great question, Madeline, and so true about first time feelings - it takes a lot of awareness and effort to balance the existing connections and in-groupyness with welcoming energy. At the LABC, we do a few things:
At every meeting, the MC acknowledges guests (aka nonmembers) and if we don’t have an initiation, we do guest introductions. This involves a member at each table collecting information (name, hometown, occupation, an interesting fact) about every first timer at the table, and presenting this information to the entire audience. The MC then gets to decide which table presented the best introductions and the winning table gets to have the Golden Horse for the rest of the meeting. This works in that it ensures newcomers will be greeted by at least one member, and often the interesting facts shared spark additional conversation with the newcomers! And, acknowledgement itself goes a long way - the MC says “we don’t like to have breakfast with strangers” as part of the guest intro segment, meaning “if you are here, you are a friend”!
Also, everyone is invited to join the Grand Salute, which is essentially a receiving line where you shake hands with everyone at the dais - and this involves our secret handshake of course.
With so many inside joke and traditions, and newcomers could easily get lost, but members know it is their duty to make anyone with a name tag instead of a member badge (a signifier of membership) feel welcome. So members will always make an effort to meet and converse with the guests at their table, and share the secret handshake and other traditions. Whenever I’m in the handshake line, I look for anyone with name tags and I’ll ask, “hi, I’m Bri, is this your first time here? How did you hear about us?” and that way I know to offer a little guidance if they are brand new. And I learned this from the members that came before me.
I think it comes down to the club’s defining values and principles - we are open, welcoming and friendly, and that’s like the only thing that we take seriously.
1) I read “NEW YORK CITY?!?” in that voice from the Pace commercial before I could even place it.
2) It seems like part of the success of this group is that the threshold for participation is low. I love an organization that allows me to be present while I’m there and asks nothing of me when I’m not. I can’t always commit to reading a book or raising funds, but I can commit to being enthusiastic and welcoming in the moment. More groups like this, please!
I've started and joined a few things in the past few years. It's always hard and it's always worth it. Making adult friends is a slow going process. Most of these people I see once a month and even if we have a blast it's different than when we were in grade school and we spent all day together having shared experiences. I guess for those of us who work remotely we don't even have that office experience anymore. I think after the covid lockdowns many of us realized being social is a muscle - we have to exercise it or we forget how to use it. It's easy to want to retreat but it doesn't do me any favors. And I never regret the nights I am out for book, bunco, or restaurant club.
Well said, Julia!! It absolutely is a muscle. I'm a remote worker too, and it helps my mental health immensely that at least once a week I will always get out of the apartment and talk to some people face to face. And - not always, but often - it creates and perpetuates a social momentum that you can only get from being out in the world.
I have been!! And they are just as welcoming as you’d imagine, with incredibly fun and silly (in the best way) rituals to boot. So excited to see them on here, AHP 🤗
Couple things to offer that I've been working on. One– if you live in Los Angeles and are looking for connection, here’s a Community Index my friend Aria and I have been growing: https://floc.community/commindex/. About 52 communities in there so far, so high odds you'll find something you connect with!
Two (re: that ^), Aria and I (serial gatherers ourselves 😂)started a grassroots group called FLOC that, in short, is a community for community gatherers in LA. It occurred to us that the best way to strengthen communities during a time when they're more needed than ever is to support the people that organize them. So we spent the last year and a half talking to community builders about how they run their communities, what they wish they had access to, and their own personal experience as gatherers. Common thread? Burnout. In a loneliness epidemic, gatherers basically become another type of undervalued/under-compensated care workers. And yet, they persist!!
We're having our second meet-up in a few weeks so, if there are any LA gatherers in here, please reach out! Entirely free. We're told the first one felt like 'gatherer therapy' 🥹
Also, the silly little rat in my icon–I have a newsletter called Ratplay about LA communities (yes, I'm obsessed). Tried to figure out how to post as myself (Ciara) for this post but couldn't figure it out...rat life chose me 🤷♀️
Thank you for posting the FLOC link! I live in LA and would totally be a regular at the Los Angeles Breakfast Club if I didn't have to be at work Wednesday mornings.
I'm obsessed with the little rituals you shared here - like shouting NEW YORK CITY?! Those fun in-jokes are such a simple but effective way of making a group feel like an 'us'!
I know I bring this up regularly, but so much about this resonated with me with regard to my running group. We have a range of abilities, walks of life, and ages. (One of our fastest runners is in his 50s and fast runners half his age struggle to keep up!) There are hours-long stretches of time together with nothing to do but share our lives and ramble through topics. There are rituals (half-hearted warm up exercises while we chit chat), running jokes ("wow, can't believe it took 2 miles for Barb to start talking about her hormones"), and "war stories" from past races and runs that get told over and over. This past season someone made a joke referencing a story from the past, and I heard a teammate explain to a brand new member the whole background...then I realized that the person explaining it wasn't even on the group when the original thing happened! I started to see it as a kind of oral tradition being retold and refined over and over, bringing in new people to be a part of it. It's so wonderful.
I joined Kiwanis in 2023, which I've ended up liking more than I thought I would. There are two clubs in Missoula, one that has a weekly breakfast meeting and one that has a weekly lunch. My best friend here has been in the breakfast one, and got me to go be a guest speaker one time, but I just can't be excited about a morning commitment. Years later, in a series of events reminiscent of A Christmas Carol, I had 3 encounters with people I knew in the lunch one, and decided to give it a shot. They'd been planning to invite me as a guest speaker, apparently, so I did that in the midst of my get-acquainted lunch meetings.
We're basically raising money for a set of youth related programs, but also enjoying being together once a week, and having interesting weekly speakers on a huge variety of subjects. Annie, if you're going to be in Missoula in connection with the next book, let me know, and I'll sic the program people on you. Folks will be interested in it. (Although you're probably more interested in the breakfast group, what with the waking up and running marathons thing.)
Anyway, a lot of places have clubs like this, so folks don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Also I've been a member of the county Democratic Central Committee since 2013. As folks can imagine, this has sometimes been exasperating, but it's also been interesting, and I've met a lot of great people from around the county and across the state as part of this. I was a member of the executive board for 6 years, but stepped out hoping younger people would step in, and they have. The current leadership is younger and more dynamic. Month in and month out, it's not been much about presidential politics -- Montana isn't really in play for those -- but at all the other levels we've been relevant. I could go on at length about the interesting projects I've been involved in over the years -- platform conventions, local resolutions, etc -- but this is already long enough.
If you can give me 4-6 weeks lead time, I can see about getting you a program role. If you just want to have lunch as my guest, that's just any Tuesday. Whatever fits!
I was thinking this sounded kind of like Rotary. I've never been in Rotary, but I was a Rotary exchange student so I've been to a decent number of meetings. Rotary is less lighthearted fun, more earnest civic stuff IME, but the regular meetings around a meal, speaker, and networking felt very familiar!
I haven't been to a Rotary meeting, but my perception is that networking plays a bigger role there. At Kiwanis, you get fined (albeit modestly) if you talk about your job: it's emphatically not a sales or professional networking venue.
I cannot imagine a better explainer on the appeal of our wonderful little club. Bri, this was fantastic. Other Los Angeles Culture Study readers, come join us, even if just for a morning or two! You’ll be in excellent company.
I moved to LA a little less than a year ago and learned about the club through a past Culture Study post. I’ve had the homepage saved since then but have been intimidated to show up! Thanks for making it seem more accessible!
This is incredible (especially the bit about "not being treated like a consumer"). What do you good people in the comments know/suspect/think about what it takes to start something like this? I'm hoping to skip over the bunch of horse-riding men starting point.
We're in a relatively small, rural town but have a lot of folks commuting for the big government employer, so I think the energy could be here for something similar. Practical questions include: how would I advance it beyond my friends and people who look/act/think like my friends? How does one finance breakfast initially and then scale that? How many traditions and tenets do you lay out at founding, and how much do you allow to develop organically? Can one start campy traditions without 100 years of history backing them?
You have great questions, Lauren, and I think Elly did a great job answering them!
In terms of advancing it beyond your bubble, something the LABC has done a LOT of in recent years, thanks to fellow board member and very cool dude Rich Mayerik, is community outreach. We do promo tables at events and/or participate in any and every community event that will have us: cultural festivals, parades, fairs. It gives us an opportunity to familiarize the general public with who we are and what we do, and brings in a lot of new folks.
Another thing that helps widen our reach is the strategy behind our programming and the speakers we book, and asking our speakers to promote their appearance. Oftentimes new guests first come because they follow the speaker, and then they stick around once they see what we're all about.
I have similar questions to Lauren about logistics. I’m in NYC where gathering space usually comes at a cost. For those who start things—how would you fund a space or speakers or the breakfast, once you get past the potluck phase? Do you collect dues? Or do fundraisers? There was mention of a board for the LA club—is it a nonprofit and these are all volunteers? (As a sometime PTA volunteer I’m wary of the work involved, but very tempted to find or start something like this!)
I’ll just speak to the questions about the LABC specifically since I don’t have personal experience on starting or transitioning. We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit (actually we just got that status back last year after a lapse due to failure to file paperwork). We have a volunteer Board of Directors, several volunteer committees, and we have 4 part time employees: Club Manager, Club Admin, Music Director, Stage Tech. We collect dues, which we’ve made every effort to keep low and accessible (though we do have financial aid for members as well) compared to the flashy new (often tech-backed) community spaces like Ground Floor, The Wing, etc. We charge for breakfast tickets, run a door prize every week, sell merch, and we’re about to get into bigger scale fundraising efforts next year around our 100th so TBD on how that goes.
Having an extremely cheap venue agreement for decades certainly helped and I wish I had advice to give in that area - all I can think of is maybe venue partnership is possible, or looking for low cost city-owned venues, if that is relevant near you.
Yes, start something! Some advice from a serial starter: so long as you've got a solid idea of the principles of what you want to create, don't mind putting yourself out there to invite people to show up, and are open to evolution - which also means jumping on the chance to empower anyone who shows the slightest interest in taking on responsibilities or has an idea for how to make it better, you'll be good. You can always start as a potluck. DEFINITELY start with a couple solidly random and campy traditions and watch out for the opportunity to stoke new ones.
Last month I gathered my courage and went to an "open sew day" at a quilt studio nearby. The owner has seats for 12-15 and provides electricity, water and a few snacks. You bring your own machine and quilting supplies, and additional snacks if you want. She has open sew days every Tuesday and about one weekend per month.
My first time I was super quiet, but everyone was welcoming and a few people drifted close to see what I was working on. The next time, people remembered me and greeted me. The third time I felt pretty comfortable and integrated. "Doing" while getting to know people really eased the way for me.
The other thing that I really like about this group and space is that Becca has a dining table and chairs. Everyone breaks to eat lunch together at the table, whether you've brought your own or ordered in. It's really unifying somehow.
The Tuesday meetings are during the work day. Fortunately, I have a good amount of PTO built up and plan to attend at least quarterly in addition to the monthly weekends.
So many things about this -- especially the silly rituals and immediately being accepted as part of the group -- remind me so of my experience playing trombone in college marching band. I went to a big school with a big band, and the trombone section had around 50 members each year. Even just our section had so many dumb rituals, like things we'd yell and do motions for at certain times of football games (often having nothing to do with the game), chants we'd do every day at practice, ridiculous traditions at certain times of the week or year carried over from year to year (some of which we started ourselves) -- and also there was just a joyful acceptance of everyone who was a part of the section, inclusion of everyone in big events like meals and parties, etc.
I haven't found something quite the same thing anywhere as an adult, but the LABC is inspiring! I'm mostly involved in kid- and school-focused stuff right now, but this makes me want to look around for a similar organization.
I love this comparison to marching band- The LABC sometimes reminds me of belonging to Drama Club in high school - a similar vein! There does seem to be so much more opportunity for this kind of connection in childhood/young adulthood, and less so in full-on adulthood. Which is a damn shame!! Here's hoping that changes, because we all need community and connection, at every phase of life.
i really like the idea of how to be a joiner, but i'm more interested in how to be an starter, or an organizer. i don't mean organizing like politically but something like this. i imagine starting with a friendgroup and expanding to their friends and so on. logistically though, how to begin something like this unless someone has the means, the space themselves, or the connections? i guess the answer is "just ask someone/someplace!" right?
This is so cool. In this era of ghosting, I just love that people show up. But my main question is: who places the breakfast catering order?! Are there dues? It's probably not very "community" of me to think *what is the business model* but I imagine there has to be one?
LOL well we do live under late stage capitalism so I can’t blame you for your thought process!
We’ve been with the same catering company for ages, so it’s a well-oiled machine at this stage. We close off ticket sales Monday AM for Wed breakfast and report our headcount that day to catering. The menu is typically the same every week with just a few variations!
We do have annual dues, but we have made every effort to keep them low and accessible, and we offer financial aid through our foundation.
This is SO timely. I’ve been trying to put myself out there more, since my son is grown and I work from home all day. I volunteered for a toy drive last Saturday that I was scared about doing (didn’t know anyone), and I almost didn’t go. I met an amazing woman who is in charge of membership at our local YMCA, and she said they needed a Book Club organizer and my eyes lit up. I’m meeting today about that. I cannot tell you what a jumpstart that one Saturday morning has been for my heart and soul. I love the words of encouragement about exposure therapy!
Isn’t it amazing how showing up to just one thing can open up your world?? So excited for you!
Thank you! And I love the idea of incorporating silliness. I took some notes!
WOW, what an inspiring organization! If anyone else is a fan of the Betsy-Tacy books, this sounds exactly like all the clubs they're always joining and starting in there. And for a more modern analog, it reminds me a ton of my college marching band - which involved no musical requirements and promised 'two hundred instant friends'. We've got an active alumni gang and still get together every year, and honestly, it's the little rituals - the callbacks, the heckling - that makes me feel the most warm and fuzzy inside.
The Betsy-Tacy books! Are you a member of the Betsy-Tacy society? This is a plethora of women from far and wide who have all connected through their love of these books! You can join, or just follow them on Facebook for now. (I should say “us”
because I’ve been a member for years and have met many amazing women as a result)
I didn't see your comment until after I wrote mine, but it also reminded me so much of college marching band!
Betsy-Tacy!!
Sounds so fun!! <3
THANK YOU so much, AHP, for letting me go on and on about our little club!
I just want to add recognition by name for two of my fellow Board Directors: Club Historian Rachel Skytt for fact checking me, and my dear friend Sabrina Parke who is the reason I even know about this (nearly) century-old institution! And photo credit to Larry Underhill (Melissa Villaseñor in the buffet line) and Charly Shelton (coffee cup).
Thanks so much for sharing the club with us all, Bri! I'd love to hear about anything you do to make new people feel welcome at their first or second breakfast. Are there any rituals associated with welcoming newbies?
It doesn't sound like it happens with your wonderful club, but I know I've certainly had the experience of going to an established group for the first time and feeling excluded because everyone else knew each other. How do you encourage existing members to connect with new folks and get them feel like a part of it?
What a great question, Madeline, and so true about first time feelings - it takes a lot of awareness and effort to balance the existing connections and in-groupyness with welcoming energy. At the LABC, we do a few things:
At every meeting, the MC acknowledges guests (aka nonmembers) and if we don’t have an initiation, we do guest introductions. This involves a member at each table collecting information (name, hometown, occupation, an interesting fact) about every first timer at the table, and presenting this information to the entire audience. The MC then gets to decide which table presented the best introductions and the winning table gets to have the Golden Horse for the rest of the meeting. This works in that it ensures newcomers will be greeted by at least one member, and often the interesting facts shared spark additional conversation with the newcomers! And, acknowledgement itself goes a long way - the MC says “we don’t like to have breakfast with strangers” as part of the guest intro segment, meaning “if you are here, you are a friend”!
Also, everyone is invited to join the Grand Salute, which is essentially a receiving line where you shake hands with everyone at the dais - and this involves our secret handshake of course.
With so many inside joke and traditions, and newcomers could easily get lost, but members know it is their duty to make anyone with a name tag instead of a member badge (a signifier of membership) feel welcome. So members will always make an effort to meet and converse with the guests at their table, and share the secret handshake and other traditions. Whenever I’m in the handshake line, I look for anyone with name tags and I’ll ask, “hi, I’m Bri, is this your first time here? How did you hear about us?” and that way I know to offer a little guidance if they are brand new. And I learned this from the members that came before me.
I think it comes down to the club’s defining values and principles - we are open, welcoming and friendly, and that’s like the only thing that we take seriously.
Thanks so much for the answer! Love all of these, what fantastic ways to make people feel welcome.
1) I read “NEW YORK CITY?!?” in that voice from the Pace commercial before I could even place it.
2) It seems like part of the success of this group is that the threshold for participation is low. I love an organization that allows me to be present while I’m there and asks nothing of me when I’m not. I can’t always commit to reading a book or raising funds, but I can commit to being enthusiastic and welcoming in the moment. More groups like this, please!
I've started and joined a few things in the past few years. It's always hard and it's always worth it. Making adult friends is a slow going process. Most of these people I see once a month and even if we have a blast it's different than when we were in grade school and we spent all day together having shared experiences. I guess for those of us who work remotely we don't even have that office experience anymore. I think after the covid lockdowns many of us realized being social is a muscle - we have to exercise it or we forget how to use it. It's easy to want to retreat but it doesn't do me any favors. And I never regret the nights I am out for book, bunco, or restaurant club.
Well said, Julia!! It absolutely is a muscle. I'm a remote worker too, and it helps my mental health immensely that at least once a week I will always get out of the apartment and talk to some people face to face. And - not always, but often - it creates and perpetuates a social momentum that you can only get from being out in the world.
I have been!! And they are just as welcoming as you’d imagine, with incredibly fun and silly (in the best way) rituals to boot. So excited to see them on here, AHP 🤗
Couple things to offer that I've been working on. One– if you live in Los Angeles and are looking for connection, here’s a Community Index my friend Aria and I have been growing: https://floc.community/commindex/. About 52 communities in there so far, so high odds you'll find something you connect with!
Two (re: that ^), Aria and I (serial gatherers ourselves 😂)started a grassroots group called FLOC that, in short, is a community for community gatherers in LA. It occurred to us that the best way to strengthen communities during a time when they're more needed than ever is to support the people that organize them. So we spent the last year and a half talking to community builders about how they run their communities, what they wish they had access to, and their own personal experience as gatherers. Common thread? Burnout. In a loneliness epidemic, gatherers basically become another type of undervalued/under-compensated care workers. And yet, they persist!!
We're having our second meet-up in a few weeks so, if there are any LA gatherers in here, please reach out! Entirely free. We're told the first one felt like 'gatherer therapy' 🥹
Also, the silly little rat in my icon–I have a newsletter called Ratplay about LA communities (yes, I'm obsessed). Tried to figure out how to post as myself (Ciara) for this post but couldn't figure it out...rat life chose me 🤷♀️
LOVE this Community Index, what an awesome idea!
I'd love to come to the next FLOC meetup!
Thank you for posting the FLOC link! I live in LA and would totally be a regular at the Los Angeles Breakfast Club if I didn't have to be at work Wednesday mornings.
of course!!
I'm obsessed with the little rituals you shared here - like shouting NEW YORK CITY?! Those fun in-jokes are such a simple but effective way of making a group feel like an 'us'!
I know I bring this up regularly, but so much about this resonated with me with regard to my running group. We have a range of abilities, walks of life, and ages. (One of our fastest runners is in his 50s and fast runners half his age struggle to keep up!) There are hours-long stretches of time together with nothing to do but share our lives and ramble through topics. There are rituals (half-hearted warm up exercises while we chit chat), running jokes ("wow, can't believe it took 2 miles for Barb to start talking about her hormones"), and "war stories" from past races and runs that get told over and over. This past season someone made a joke referencing a story from the past, and I heard a teammate explain to a brand new member the whole background...then I realized that the person explaining it wasn't even on the group when the original thing happened! I started to see it as a kind of oral tradition being retold and refined over and over, bringing in new people to be a part of it. It's so wonderful.
This is so lovely!! Thank you for sharing, it’s SO COOL to hear about how many different forms and themes this kind of space can take.
I joined Kiwanis in 2023, which I've ended up liking more than I thought I would. There are two clubs in Missoula, one that has a weekly breakfast meeting and one that has a weekly lunch. My best friend here has been in the breakfast one, and got me to go be a guest speaker one time, but I just can't be excited about a morning commitment. Years later, in a series of events reminiscent of A Christmas Carol, I had 3 encounters with people I knew in the lunch one, and decided to give it a shot. They'd been planning to invite me as a guest speaker, apparently, so I did that in the midst of my get-acquainted lunch meetings.
We're basically raising money for a set of youth related programs, but also enjoying being together once a week, and having interesting weekly speakers on a huge variety of subjects. Annie, if you're going to be in Missoula in connection with the next book, let me know, and I'll sic the program people on you. Folks will be interested in it. (Although you're probably more interested in the breakfast group, what with the waking up and running marathons thing.)
Anyway, a lot of places have clubs like this, so folks don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Also I've been a member of the county Democratic Central Committee since 2013. As folks can imagine, this has sometimes been exasperating, but it's also been interesting, and I've met a lot of great people from around the county and across the state as part of this. I was a member of the executive board for 6 years, but stepped out hoping younger people would step in, and they have. The current leadership is younger and more dynamic. Month in and month out, it's not been much about presidential politics -- Montana isn't really in play for those -- but at all the other levels we've been relevant. I could go on at length about the interesting projects I've been involved in over the years -- platform conventions, local resolutions, etc -- but this is already long enough.
Charley you know I'd love a Kiwanis meeting!
If you can give me 4-6 weeks lead time, I can see about getting you a program role. If you just want to have lunch as my guest, that's just any Tuesday. Whatever fits!
I was thinking this sounded kind of like Rotary. I've never been in Rotary, but I was a Rotary exchange student so I've been to a decent number of meetings. Rotary is less lighthearted fun, more earnest civic stuff IME, but the regular meetings around a meal, speaker, and networking felt very familiar!
I haven't been to a Rotary meeting, but my perception is that networking plays a bigger role there. At Kiwanis, you get fined (albeit modestly) if you talk about your job: it's emphatically not a sales or professional networking venue.
I cannot imagine a better explainer on the appeal of our wonderful little club. Bri, this was fantastic. Other Los Angeles Culture Study readers, come join us, even if just for a morning or two! You’ll be in excellent company.
I moved to LA a little less than a year ago and learned about the club through a past Culture Study post. I’ve had the homepage saved since then but have been intimidated to show up! Thanks for making it seem more accessible!
Come find me and say hello! I’m usually at the Tiki Table and I have a blue Secretary ribbon hanging off my button :)
Thanks, Ham! So proud to be a part of this silly little organization with you!!
See you in an hour, Ham!
This is incredible (especially the bit about "not being treated like a consumer"). What do you good people in the comments know/suspect/think about what it takes to start something like this? I'm hoping to skip over the bunch of horse-riding men starting point.
We're in a relatively small, rural town but have a lot of folks commuting for the big government employer, so I think the energy could be here for something similar. Practical questions include: how would I advance it beyond my friends and people who look/act/think like my friends? How does one finance breakfast initially and then scale that? How many traditions and tenets do you lay out at founding, and how much do you allow to develop organically? Can one start campy traditions without 100 years of history backing them?
You have great questions, Lauren, and I think Elly did a great job answering them!
In terms of advancing it beyond your bubble, something the LABC has done a LOT of in recent years, thanks to fellow board member and very cool dude Rich Mayerik, is community outreach. We do promo tables at events and/or participate in any and every community event that will have us: cultural festivals, parades, fairs. It gives us an opportunity to familiarize the general public with who we are and what we do, and brings in a lot of new folks.
Another thing that helps widen our reach is the strategy behind our programming and the speakers we book, and asking our speakers to promote their appearance. Oftentimes new guests first come because they follow the speaker, and then they stick around once they see what we're all about.
I have similar questions to Lauren about logistics. I’m in NYC where gathering space usually comes at a cost. For those who start things—how would you fund a space or speakers or the breakfast, once you get past the potluck phase? Do you collect dues? Or do fundraisers? There was mention of a board for the LA club—is it a nonprofit and these are all volunteers? (As a sometime PTA volunteer I’m wary of the work involved, but very tempted to find or start something like this!)
I’ll just speak to the questions about the LABC specifically since I don’t have personal experience on starting or transitioning. We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit (actually we just got that status back last year after a lapse due to failure to file paperwork). We have a volunteer Board of Directors, several volunteer committees, and we have 4 part time employees: Club Manager, Club Admin, Music Director, Stage Tech. We collect dues, which we’ve made every effort to keep low and accessible (though we do have financial aid for members as well) compared to the flashy new (often tech-backed) community spaces like Ground Floor, The Wing, etc. We charge for breakfast tickets, run a door prize every week, sell merch, and we’re about to get into bigger scale fundraising efforts next year around our 100th so TBD on how that goes.
Having an extremely cheap venue agreement for decades certainly helped and I wish I had advice to give in that area - all I can think of is maybe venue partnership is possible, or looking for low cost city-owned venues, if that is relevant near you.
Yes, start something! Some advice from a serial starter: so long as you've got a solid idea of the principles of what you want to create, don't mind putting yourself out there to invite people to show up, and are open to evolution - which also means jumping on the chance to empower anyone who shows the slightest interest in taking on responsibilities or has an idea for how to make it better, you'll be good. You can always start as a potluck. DEFINITELY start with a couple solidly random and campy traditions and watch out for the opportunity to stoke new ones.
Thank you! These tips are great!
Thanks for this!
Last month I gathered my courage and went to an "open sew day" at a quilt studio nearby. The owner has seats for 12-15 and provides electricity, water and a few snacks. You bring your own machine and quilting supplies, and additional snacks if you want. She has open sew days every Tuesday and about one weekend per month.
My first time I was super quiet, but everyone was welcoming and a few people drifted close to see what I was working on. The next time, people remembered me and greeted me. The third time I felt pretty comfortable and integrated. "Doing" while getting to know people really eased the way for me.
The other thing that I really like about this group and space is that Becca has a dining table and chairs. Everyone breaks to eat lunch together at the table, whether you've brought your own or ordered in. It's really unifying somehow.
Love this!! I just started going to a needlework meetup at our local
creative reuse space and it was a similar vibe to your open sew day. It fills my heart with such joy to gather with fellow crafty people!
The Tuesday meetings are during the work day. Fortunately, I have a good amount of PTO built up and plan to attend at least quarterly in addition to the monthly weekends.
I love my local quilt guild! Good job on going! I feel like quilters love to talk to other quilters about making quilts!
So many things about this -- especially the silly rituals and immediately being accepted as part of the group -- remind me so of my experience playing trombone in college marching band. I went to a big school with a big band, and the trombone section had around 50 members each year. Even just our section had so many dumb rituals, like things we'd yell and do motions for at certain times of football games (often having nothing to do with the game), chants we'd do every day at practice, ridiculous traditions at certain times of the week or year carried over from year to year (some of which we started ourselves) -- and also there was just a joyful acceptance of everyone who was a part of the section, inclusion of everyone in big events like meals and parties, etc.
I haven't found something quite the same thing anywhere as an adult, but the LABC is inspiring! I'm mostly involved in kid- and school-focused stuff right now, but this makes me want to look around for a similar organization.
I love this comparison to marching band- The LABC sometimes reminds me of belonging to Drama Club in high school - a similar vein! There does seem to be so much more opportunity for this kind of connection in childhood/young adulthood, and less so in full-on adulthood. Which is a damn shame!! Here's hoping that changes, because we all need community and connection, at every phase of life.
i really like the idea of how to be a joiner, but i'm more interested in how to be an starter, or an organizer. i don't mean organizing like politically but something like this. i imagine starting with a friendgroup and expanding to their friends and so on. logistically though, how to begin something like this unless someone has the means, the space themselves, or the connections? i guess the answer is "just ask someone/someplace!" right?
Absolutely, start small! And I don’t think I can understate the value of consistency.
This is so cool. In this era of ghosting, I just love that people show up. But my main question is: who places the breakfast catering order?! Are there dues? It's probably not very "community" of me to think *what is the business model* but I imagine there has to be one?
LOL well we do live under late stage capitalism so I can’t blame you for your thought process!
We’ve been with the same catering company for ages, so it’s a well-oiled machine at this stage. We close off ticket sales Monday AM for Wed breakfast and report our headcount that day to catering. The menu is typically the same every week with just a few variations!
We do have annual dues, but we have made every effort to keep them low and accessible, and we offer financial aid through our foundation.
Honestly this sounds like a cooler version of Rotary club.