HomeGroup Activities Management

MANAGING GROUP ACTIVITIES

Management of an individual activity is mostly in the hands of the activity members. The Program committee (in an all-volunteer Village) or administrator (in a village with paid staff) supports and coordinates group activities for members. Group activities are diverse offerings available to members (e.g., biking, book clubs, etc.). The Village contributes a forum capability for communication within the group, and web pages to advertise the activity. Members can join an open group simply by indicating their interest in the activity through their profile or calling the office an asking to join.Join Now

Starting a new group

When a member proposes to organize a new activity, which the program committee / administrator feels is viable and appropriate, the committee/admin will first gain a commitment from the member requesting the group to serve as the initial leader.

First, add a brief description of the activity to the overall activities page entitled "Group Activities".Edit Web Pages

Next, create a new "interest" for this activity with interest category of "Open Activity Group"and add the “interest” to the list of existing interests in that category. Forums Manager Alternately add it to the "Potential Interests" category and wait to see if enough members are interested.

Create a listserv or forum for the activity with the forum category of “open activities” or "potential activities". Assign the activity leader as the moderator of the forum. The forum’s membership is set to any member who indicates an interest in the activity.Manage Interests.

From the interests administration manager,Manage Interests select the category, then select the interest, and next add all the members who have initially indicated that they wish to join. Later on, members will be able to join by indicating an interest from their profile or by calling the office and asking them to indicate the member’s interest.

Emails to all current members of the group can be generated by posting to the group’s forum or by replying to an email from the group’s forum (if the list serve capability is enabled). Call the ClubExpress office to enable this capability.

The initial group leader should:

Have some familiarity with activity
Obtain names and information of interested members
Determine introductory meeting date and email interested participants: date, time, location (library meeting rooms work well)
Set an agenda for the first meeting:
- What is the goal of the group
- When and where will meetings occur?
- How will group communication occur and who will be responsible?

PhotosEncourage groups to take photos of their activities and send them to the website administrator and the program committee. The village can use these for attracting members and the groups can use them for getting more members. Encourage groups to create and maintain photo albums of their activities.

After organizing initially, each activity chooses its own group leader from the members of the activity. When the activity leader changes, the program committee or admin will make the new leader the moderator of the groups forum. Members join or leave the activity by checking or unchecking their interest in the activity.

Occasionally, the Group Activities Committee/administrator checks in with the various groups to make sure they are still active and have a leader, taking steps to resuscitate or terminate groups where necessary.

Closing a Group

Some activities have a natural limit to the number of members. For example, book groups generally have no more than a dozen members. When a group decides it has reached its limit, the program committee or administrator will close the full group and may start a new potential group for the activity.

To close a group, the group's forum (listserve) is must be modified so that specific individual, rather than anyone who checks off that they are interested is part of the forum. Forums Manager Rename the existing forum to something similar. For example, "book group" becomes "book group 2020A". Change the forum category to "closed". Change the forum membership to the explicit names of the current members. Remove interest in the activity from the existing members' profiles, (since they are no longer interested in joining a new book group). Then create a new forum with the original name and set up the new forum to include all new members who indicate interest in the activity. Initially, the new activity group may have no members, but once critical mass is reached, repeat the process for starting a new activity group.

New members can still be added to a closed group by contacting the activity leader and being added individually to the group's forum. Members can leave the same way.