How To start a group

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Absurd

(Or how to survive the parallel universe of local government)

So you’re sat there one night in the bath making your own Jacuzzi when you have an earth shattering idea to start your own LGBT group. You leap out of the bath shouting Eureka and run down the road naked and are nicked for indecent exposure. The first thing to do is DO NOT RUN NAKED DOWN THE ROAD.

1 Switch on the computer and find your council’s website.

Here you will find a section on community and voluntary services. This is your first port of call for finding out what help can be had. Contact these people and they will send a representative to talk over with you what you are doing and how they can help.

2 To get anywhere for start up funds you need two things:

A: A constitution for the group and board members. Here’s the thing, you need to gather around you others who are of a similar mind, who can be depended on to support and aid your efforts. If you start entirely on your own, finding like minded people can be difficult, so try these ways:

Free adverts on Vivastreet
Facebook, start your own group,
Microsoft office live is where you can start a half decent FREE website which can be linked to from your face book group.

First group meetings

This can be difficult and is often a big barrier for a fledgling group to get over. Do you meet in the local pub or can you get a coffee shop to open late for you.

Ok, so you have finally found somewhere to hold a meeting, you have spread the word and that evening you wait with baited breath for the hall/room/pub to fill with enthusiastic and eager members. An hour later you realize no one has turned up…..You are a failure! Not at all! Just because you are enthusiastic it is not necessarily true every one else is. What is needed here is time, time for the word to spread through the electronic highways, by ways and the verbal grapevine. This is where all community groups start, indeed if you get 5 people, compared to most other groups, this first meeting is a resounding success.

You need to keep calling get togethers, organizing day trips out, meet-ups, these can be walks, days out to the markets, a lazy Sunday afternoon in the village in Manchester, the list is endless and only constrained by your imagination. The upside of this is you have no need to find rooms to meet in.

The Sneaky Bit

The meet ups are your way to get to know like minded people and to decide who you would like on the board. After all, you don’t want people elected to the board who are not prepared to help and contribute to the running of the group, but only want to be in a position to make decisions….You don’t want dead wood!

Don’t be tempted to grab the first people to show an interest and sign them up for the board and onto the constitution. If you get the wrong people on the board, it can be bloody impossible to get them off!

Besides, you want people of good character, finding you have a sexual predator, paedophile or embezzler on the board can sink your group before it is even off the ground. Leave it a few months before you ask people to join the board, I know it feels like forever when you are in the first flush of enthusiasm but a little caution and waiting now means you will reap the rewards in the near future.

B Open a bank account. For this you will need a group constitution signed by the members of the board and two people from the board, either the chair, treasurer or secretary to be present at the opening of the account. Contact the bank of your choice and make sure you have all the proof of identity they ask for and then some. Last year the rules were changed for opening this type of account, they are now much more stringent as in the past they were often used to launder cash.

3 Decide what you want out of your group!

It may sound obvious but when you all start talking, planning and dreaming your core reason can often get overshadowed. The core strategy for Just Us is ENDING ISOLATION. That is our unique selling point, our reason for being. You will often find with most L.G.B.T. groups that was the initial reason for starting up but then they often get diluted when they find out they can get funds if they start e.g., health initiatives, training seminars and so on. They then forget it is about people, connecting, befriending and helping each other. If you set yourselves up as an authority that L.G.B.T. people can come to, those people will stop helping each other and themselves, they will expect you to do it! This ultimately weakens any community, leave the big initiatives to the big LGBT charities, that’s what they do best.

Your core strategy may be campaigning, if you concentrate on that, eventually that will be what you do best and your experience and expertise will benefit the LGBT community as a whole.


4 Basic Funding

Your local council often have small grants which will be of use for you to get off the ground. Remember this, no matter what happens down the line, the council is not doing you a favour by giving you that grant, you are doing them one. Why? Because Whitehall give local government a lot of little boxes to tick, all involved in inclusion, reaching out to minorities and so on. If the council does not tick all of its boxes, the Whitehall mandarins get VERY tetchy.

5 What you use your grant for……

Public and Personal Liability Insurance! That is what as a group you will need to be taken seriously. The fact that you have spent probably all of your initial start up fund on insurance shows you intend to develop your group. Secondly do not assume all of your members are fair or even entirely from the same universe. If someone can make a buck off of you, they will. It sounds paranoid but it really is true, these days with no win no fee lawyers, owd Mavis is very likely to try to sue for her twisted ankle whilst on an afternoon walk around the reservoirs. You will also learn not to take anyone at face value.

6 A Parallel Universe

Usually when contacting your local community voluntary services you will find them organized and professional. Sometimes, depending on the set up of your particular council, you may not get your start off funds directly from them. This is where you start to enter a parallel universe! You may have to go through two or even three boards, staffed by community volunteers to finally get your funding. If you do there are a few things to bear in mind. These people often do not do paid work, they do this in place of it and for some it is often the only thing they have in their lives, it gives them importance and status, they may not have had in their working lives. Most 99 out of 100 will be absolute jewels, angels from god! But that one percent can hold you back either by not passing on your communications, acting beyond their remit or by wanting to control every aspect of any and all community groups. If you find yourself in this position, going to meeting after meeting, making phone call after phone call and seemingly getting nowhere. Do not despair, eventually that block will go away. If the aggravation gets too much you may decide to cut your losses and go elsewhere for your initial start off fund. Look to the community chest that will probably be the best second port of call.

This where your really start your education and realize the value of your board members. Now you know you cannot run the face book groups, websites and advertisements, or organize the get-togethers yourself. Start to delegate and let your board members take over that aspect of the group or if you find those are your strengths, get others to deal with finding the funds. Remember, it is still early days and the old adage “you can’t run before you can walk” still holds true!

Stages of Group Development

These can be condensed into three stages:

1 Idea and starting out, building a core of loyal members.
2 Consolidating your position, playing to your strengths and starting to identify needs within your community.
3 Growth of group fulfilling those identified needs.

Word of warning! Do not grow too much or too fast, aim for long term development. So even if a Santa comes along offering you a grant for three years, of £100’000 for say a health initiative spit him in the face and say “Begone foul daemon”. Research has shown that L.G.B.T. groups which have been started from scratch and given large budgets, rarely last more than three years. Those that last are the small and medium sized ones with a loyal and talented core of members; these are inevitably the ones in for the long term.

Good luck with your new group, I know you can do it!

Produced by Shelley Jenkins Chair of Just Us Wigan, LGBT Drop in Centre and Social Group.
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