As your community grows, it can be difficult to schedule Meetups and manage communication by yourself.
Creating a leadership team can help:
- Distribute the workload: Additional leaders allows you to delegate organizing responsibilities.
- Encourage collaboration: Having more leaders empowers them to learn leadership skills and builds trust in your community.
- Reward members: Assigning leadership roles is a great way to let a member know you love their passion and ideas
You decide how many other leaders you need and what responsibilities they should take on.
Co-organizer: Your co-organizer(s) are your second-in-command. They embody your Meetup’s mission entirely.
- If you want to put a co-organizer completely in charge of a local Meetup, it’s important to establish a vetting process.
- All co-organizers have permission to email the other members, and change your Meetup’s appearance and privacy settings.
Assistant organizer: Much like Co-organizers, Assistant organizers represent your community.
- Ideal Assistant organizers collaborate with the rest of your leadership to plan Meetups, maintain active communication, and encourage a friendly and warm community.
- Assistant organizers are able to email all members, but they’re not able to change or manage your Meetup’s appearance, privacy settings, or finances.
Event Organizer: If you find someone that has great Meetup ideas and would be a thoughtful host, consider making them an Event organizer.
- Event organizers should be members that understand your Meetup’s vision and will only schedule Meetups that align with it.
- Their permissions are limited to managing the calendar and emailing members online, but they need to be people you trust at IRL Meetups too.
Identifying leaders
Some of your members may tell you they want to be on your leadership team right away. In some cases, you’ll have to ask potential leaders yourself.
Communicate the responsibilities you’d like for them to handle. Before selecting someone:
- Do they represent your Meetup’s values? Find members that start conversations.
- Do they contribute lots of ideas for Meetups? Great leaders share actionable ideas and suggestions.
- Who are your consistent cheerleaders? Pick them.