Since the start of the year, we’ve been focusing on monthly initiatives. A theme that sets the stage for some of the posts we’ll be sharing throughout the month. In January, we focused on good habits. During February we kept those good habits going with a particular focus on taking care of our mental health. This month, we mentioned in the Monthly Welcome that we want to put the focus on relationships, and in particular, to something called “friendraising” like fundraising, but with friends, ya dig it?

The communities we love to insert ourselves into are usually built around shared interests: cooking, hiking, parents, etc. Normally we find out about these groups through friends, community calendars, our city’s free weekly paper, or the internet, and sometimes we start our own groups.

Sarah started this series by discussing how and why to start a meetup group and do a little friendraising for yourself. Today’s post is very similar in nature. I want to talk about starting a Facebook group. BUT as you’ll see, my group is NOT about hosting events…

The group’s theme is family-friendly local nature events,

thus the uber-cute kids-in-nature photos.

The Facebook group example that I want to share is a bit different from Sarah’s Meetup Group, but with similar benefits. Meetup groups are often centered around activities that are organized and facilitated by the group’s admins. There can be Facebook groups that use that same model, but I want to discuss using the Facebook group space as a forum for sharing events or posts under a given theme that are not be organized or facilitated by the groups admins. Why would you want to do this? Hopefully it will make sense as you continue reading…

Why Start a Facebook Group:

Let’s cover the the “whys” first, and then the “hows”.

• common interest : Start a group if you have a particular interest and want to share it with others. But before you put your energy into starting a group and recruiting members, check to make sure that a similar group doesn’t already exist.
• accessible platform : Facebook provides an easily accessible forum for sharing events, news articles, videos, photos, friends posts, etc.
• easy communication & scheduling features : It’s easy to send messages and posts events for everyone in the group to see.
• it’s free : the upside of the pesky advertising is that starting a group and communicating through Facebook is free.

Why Did I Start a Facebook Group:

As I mentioned above, my motivation for starting this group was slightly different from Sarah’s motivation for the Meetup Group.

I’m very interested in the nature and outdoor events for kids in the Boulder area. I attend a variety of weekly events with my boys and some events that are held seasonally or annually. It’s often during conversations with parents at one event that we’re sharing information about upcoming events or nature-related resources.

One day, I realized that I wanted a wanted a single forum where we could compile all of the nature-related family-friendly events. Basically a one-stop shop where fellow parents and event organizers, could share events and easily communicate about what’s happening in the area.

There was/is a meet-up group that shared nature-related events in the area, but use of that forum started to slow-down for a number of reasons. And since so many of the event organizers and parents are already on Facebook, we thought it would be a great idea to start this group on that platform.

Read on below for a discussion and specific examples of how I use the Facebook group.

How To Start a Facebook Group:

1. Sign up for Facebook
2. Under the Create tab, choose the Group option
3. Come up with a descriptive name, decide if your group will be public or private. Invite a few friends to start the group
4. Add a cover photo that’s representative of your group
5. Create a short, welcoming, descriptive intro to encourage people to join your group
6. Use “pinned” posts to keep the content that you want every to see at the top of your group’s page
7. If you’re expecting active member engagement within the group, you may want to use the “rules” tab to create rules for your group
8. Start posting!

 How I Use the Facebook Group:

I mentioned above that I am not the facilitator of events happening within my group (with one exception that I’ll mention below). Instead, this is how I use the group:

• I share events that are organized by other groups in the area (we are lucky to have a number of strong parks departments, libraries, and nature centers that all host family-friendly nature events). When another Facebook page or group posts an event, it’s easy to “share” their event to your group. The event will show up as a post within your group AND it will automatically be added to your group’s calendar.
• I share local news articles when they pertain to our theme.
• I’ve shared locally produced videos related to the theme (check out the Spanish language video that was filmed at a local nature center!).
• With the help of friends, I try to compile and share anything and everything related to our theme. I want members to see this as a useful resources, but I also am careful to not stray to far from the theme so that people don’t get tired of seeing my posts in their feed. I want them to know what to expect and for it to (hopefully) be useful.
• I host one weekly event. With a couple of other parents, I help to host a weekly nature play session that is open to the public. We started this as a continuation of a city-lead nature play that was suspended, but we had the momentum and wanted to keep it going. Each week, we post the event and location to the group. After the session, I often share a few pics with the whole group as a way to further publicize the nature play events and to share what it’s like for parents who may want more information.

A Few More Things

When I first started the group, I reached out to the local organizations that I knew hosted events we would want to share. I told them about the group and explained that we wanted to use it as a forum to share events from their groups and others in the area under our given theme. I also invited them to share events directly to our page. At the top of our page, one of my announcements includes a list of these organizations as a quick way to let members know about the different resources that exist within our community.

Our group is public (even you could join!). Everything we are sharing is already publicized by the host groups, so fortunately, we don’t have any issues or concerns about further publicizing within the community.

This is such an low energy way to share local information with a group of like-minded citizens, some of whom have now become friends! If you’re thinking about starting your own group but have questions, we are always more than happy to continue the conversation in the comments.