Starting a group from nothing

Find three people, not thirty. Three who will turn up, chosen from people you already know, and none of them recruited by a post.

Nobody has to authorise this, there is no body to register with, and you can start it this week from your kitchen. Being nervous about putting your name to it is the right response and not a sign you are the wrong person.

One thing before you collect a name. The list you are about to build is a list of Jews in your town, with addresses on it. Read the section on the list before you put out a sheet, not after.

Three, and the ask that gets them

Three is the smallest number that behaves like a group rather than one person with helpers. It survives somebody being busy. It produces disagreement early, which you want. And everybody has a job, which is what keeps people coming.

Advertising first feels like progress and mostly is not. Answering a post is easy and turning up is not, so a list of ninety strangers who have never met each other is a spreadsheet rather than an asset.

Ask directly, in person or on the phone, and make the first ask small enough to say yes to.

“Three of us are starting something here. Would you come for an hour on the 12th and help work out what it does? That’s the whole commitment.”

“I don’t want you on a committee. I want your name on a list of three so it isn’t just me.”

One line saying what it is for

Write it before the first meeting ends. Groups on this subject do one of three jobs, and they need different people.

Responding to what happens where you live. The graffiti on the shul door, the teacher who said something, the council motion. This wants people who can write, turn up to meetings and keep records. It is largely reactive and it is the job most communities have nobody doing.

Arguing the case in public. Stalls, letters, speakers, replies. Its members are anybody who agrees, and in many places most of them will not be Jewish. It is visible, and visibility is the whole point of it.

Making sure people are not on their own. Not a lesser purpose, and in most places the honest one. It designs the opposite way round. No demands, no press, nothing that invites a counter-protest, and success measured by who comes back the following month.

One group can hold two of these. All three loses people at both ends. The person who came so as not to feel alone did not sign up to be photographed at a stall.

The list is the thing to get right first

Before a single name is collected, agree four things and write them in the minutes.

1. Who holds it, and who else can open it. Two people, never one. A list on one phone is one lost phone from starting over.
2. Where it lives. Somewhere the two of you can reach and nobody else can. Not a group chat, not an attachment circulated to everybody.
3. What people are told when they join. Ask at sign-up whether they are happy to be contacted, and what they are content to be on. Some will join and want no part of anything public.
4. That it is never published, and never left on a table. A paper sheet at a kiddush or a communal event is unattended for two hours and records who is Jewish in your town.

The year of dates, fixed in one sitting

Pick a frequency you can hold and put it in the diary for twelve months. Monthly is usually right at the start. Same day, same time, same place.

Do that with a Jewish calendar open. Friday evening and Saturday daytime are out for anyone observant. Shabbat starts at sunset, so in northern Europe the Friday cut-off moves by more than five hours between December and June. Autumn loses several weeks to the festivals, and spring loses more around Pesach.

Move the clashing dates now, in one go, rather than each time one arrives. A slot that keeps being rearranged teaches people there may not be a next one, and once that assumption goes it does not come back.

Meet even when there is little to discuss. A short meeting costs less than a cancelled one.

What the group owes each person

Most codes only say what the member owes the group. Write the other half down too, and read it out to anybody joining.

• No name goes public without that person’s agreement, on a letter, a poster, a website or a press release. Being asked afterwards is not agreement.
• Anybody can leave by telling one person, and their details come off the list within a week. Nobody has to explain why and nobody is chased.
• Nobody is put in front of a camera because they look the part. The person who speaks in public volunteers for it, and it is almost always best that it is not whoever is easiest to find online.
• The group tells you before it commits your name to anything, including before it signs a joint statement with anybody else.

That last one prevents most of the falling out that ends groups.

Jobs with names on them

Four jobs, and one person can hold two. Nobody holds all four, because then it is a person with an audience.

Somebody who convenes and chases. Somebody who keeps the list. Somebody who speaks to the synagogue, the community’s security people and the neighbouring group. And somebody who handles anything public facing, chosen deliberately rather than by default.

At the end of every meeting each action carries a name and a date. Not “we should look into the venue” but “Sarah will ring the hall by Friday”.

Money becomes the fifth job the moment somebody buys a banner. In the UK a bank account in the group’s name takes weeks rather than days. It wants a written constitution and two signatories before it opens. That, and the insurance a venue will ask you for, are in what the venue asks for. What a first year costs, what a treasurer does and how to ask people for the money are in money, for a group with no money.

Who to tell that you exist

Three conversations, in the first month, all of them better in person than by email.

Your synagogue. Ask for ten minutes at the end of a committee meeting rather than sending a letter. What you want is a room, a route to people, and somebody who knows you are not going to embarrass them.

Whoever handles security for Jewish institutions where you live. They exist in most countries and they would rather hear about your event in advance than about your incident afterwards. Ask what notice they want.

The nearest group already doing this. Ask who helped them and what they would not do again. Where this backfires: an outside body’s grant or logo hands an objector a ready line about an externally run operation. Some groups take the training and decline the branding.

When it goes quiet, and when you fall out

Both will happen. For the quiet months, keep meeting, keep it short, and do one small thing. A group that suspends itself until the next crisis rarely restarts with the same people.

For the falling out, name it early and directly. Most group failures are not about strategy. They are two people who stopped speaking and nobody said so.

Two things that arrive later and are worth reading before they do. The member everybody works around, which is what folds groups this size. And when you want to stop running it, because nothing here has a clock in it and somebody has to put one there.

Next: running a meeting when this is the subject, then what is this action actually for when you are ready to organise something public.

Say these back without looking

Fill in the blanks129 words

Four answers, from memory. How many people before you advertise. The one line saying what your group is for. Who can open the list. What somebody has to do to leave.

Then, in the diary tonight:

If it is this week, then I will ring the three people by name and ask each for one hour on a fixed date.

If three of us are in a room, then before anybody leaves we will write the one line, name who holds the list, and fix twelve dates with the calendar open.

If somebody asks to join but does not want to be seen at anything public, then I will tell them what they can be on and what they will never be on, and put that in the minutes.