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“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”  – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In his book, the Art of Community, Charles Vogl defines a community as a group of individuals who share a mutual concern for one another’s welfare. And he explores seven principles of community:

1. Boundary: The line between members and outsiders.
2. Initiation: The activities that mark a new member.
3. Rituals: The things we do that have meaning.
4. Temple: A place set aside to find our community.
5. Stories: What we share that allows others and ourselves to know our values.
6. Symbols: The things that represent ideas that are important to us.
7. Inner Rings: A path to growth as we participate.

Serving Members

To create something that others want to join and support, we have to remember a core tenet: communities function best and are most durable when they’re helping members to be more successful in some way in a connected and dynamic world. The communities I’m encouraging you to build should make people (including you) stronger, happier, and full of well-being. Simply gathering people on your block together can do this. So can connecting millions of people around the world. If we fail to get members excited about committing their time and effort, they’ll leave.

To build our community, we need to answer some questions

1. What are our values – what do we stand for?
2. What do we live for – what is our noble cause?
3. What do we want = outcomes – we are succeeding in the now
4. What do we have = assets
5. What we will do = Behaviours = Processes

Ask the question in the sequence:
Values >  Outcomes > Assets > Behaviours
Then ask people what are your projects and aspirations?

1. Define and articulate your PURPOSE
2. Build flexible, extensible gathering PLACES
3. Create meaningful and evolving member PROFILES
4. Design for a range of ROLES – newbies, older players as buddies for newbies
5. Develop a strong LEADERSHIP program
6. Encourage appropriate ETIQUETTE
7. Promote cyclic EVENTS
8. Integrate the RITUALS of community life
9. Facilitate member-run SUBGROUPS
10. Measure ENGAGEMENT with the community and life using Gallup Q12

See – Community Building on the Web

And new books found on 2019-09-13

The Art of Gathering – Priya Parker

The Art of Community – Charles Vogl