Sometimes when writing, you’re talking about something that is too personal to even dress up with the trimmings of “good” writing. This is one of those times for me.
So I’ll just say it again: the organizers are tired.
There is a generation of community organizers who have been working for years to get people out and involved. They’ve toiled to find locations, put together interesting programming, handle other logistics, and encourage people to come to their events. And they’re tired.
The pandemic left a lasting impact. The work of keeping people engaged during lockdowns, then navigating the transition back to in-person events and the arguments that entailed, drove a lot of good organizers out. Those that stuck around are faced with a population that celebrates staying home and got used to being able to participate from their own living room. While the shift to hybrid events has its benefits, they require substantial effort and complicated logistics on the part of organizers.
Locations are also harder to come by. Restaurant margins are razor-thin, and it’s a challenge to find places that have a private room or even a large table they’ll set aside without a huge minimum spend or hourly fee. People want snacks and drinks at events, but you can’t do that at the local library’s community room. Groups are competing for an increasingly small number of available meeting places.
Then there’s attendance in general. For people who regularly organize community events, those memes about how great it is to cancel plans were downright triggering. For groups that used the Meetup platform pre-pandemic, it was common for less than half of the people who RSVP’ed yes to actually show up to an event. That trend continues and in some cases has gotten worse. It’s depressing, there’s no two ways about that. And it can cause tremendous stress when venues require a minimum number of people or you’re trying to provide snacks or materials on a budget.
The events that people do tend to go to, the ones with all the bells and whistles, are marketing tools of businesses dressed up as community-building. Private companies have always sponsored events or offered donations, but these days many of them have their own staff member who plans events directly. Most of this may seem benign, and I agree the local bookshop hosting regular book clubs certainly is a net good in society, but in general it’s a trend we have to watch out for. What happens when companies close or just change priorities? These sponsored events also have a tendency to suck up all the oxygen and leave smaller, grassroots groups struggling.
But also, if we’re really trying to build community bonds, we need lots of smaller groups where people can get to know one another. We need to be able to gather around a shared idea and build meaningful relationships. The people who have been doing this work for years know this, but often feel like the proverbial tree falling in the middle of the woods. If you’re providing a valuable chance for the community to come together but everyone goes to the corporate-sponsored happy hour with free drinks instead, are you even a community organizer?
Being an organizer is harder. It’s harder to find a place to meet, harder to get people to attend, and harder to gain the visibility to build an audience. A great email open rate is 50%. That’s at least half of your group who don’t know what’s going on. And on top of that, organizers are supposed to maintain a website and post about upcoming events on social media. It might seem like the obvious answer would be to find some volunteers to help, but that’s the hardest part of all.
There are legitimate strains on our time. I can’t deny that. But you know what? The person who’s running the local community group also has lots of demands on their time. They keep working and hope that more people will step in to help out. And instead of looking at over-stressed community organizers and thinking it would be better for everyone to share the work, people jump to the conclusion that volunteering will quickly lead to them being as stressed and burnt out as the organizers.
So no one steps up, the same people keep trying to make things happen, and with dwindling resources the groups we used to love start to disappear. Organizations have been scaling back operations or shutting down completely in the last few years for this very reason. It would be one thing if they were being replaced by new groups that better meet the needs of the community. Instead we look for events that provide the veneer of community without the deep roots that we really need.
What advice that does exist can be even more disheartening. Well-meaning but clueless people will suggest something like calling individuals or just going out to more events yourself. I’ve grown especially annoyed with the “magic questions” brand of relationship-building that suggests that the problem any group has is simply not having an interesting enough icebreaker. It’s all part of the same movement that started all the way back with Dale Carnegie, saying that leaders need to be more charismatic and able to connect with people. It’s a slap in the face to anyone who organizes in their community to suggest that they’re just not enough of a people person when most of us are just trying to keep going for the benefit of others.
I keep thinking of the story of Stone Soup. As individuals we might at first thing we’re supposed to do everything. It is far better if we all start contributing whatever little bit we can. Only instead of a carrot or piece of parsley, we should be contributing our skills and time to make our community better.
The people trying to keep this whole thing going are tired. And community-building can’t happen without them. I don’t expect this to inspire anyone to jump up and immediately take on a leadership role. Frankly I just don’t think I’m a persuasive enough writer. But I do hope acknowledging some of these problems can start the kind of hard conversations that lead to stronger community groups. We owe it to ourselves to improve our local ecosystems, because without them we’re nothing.
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