Building A Community #1 — Taking The Highs and The Hits

After some three years, I think I’ve enough experience now to talk about life as a community builder.

To be honest, I didn’t start off right away knowing I was “building community” from the ground up. Back when it started in 2023, I was just an early recruit into a fledgling community of mostly stay-home dads. The founder was the one who took the lead, made all the connections, found meeting venues, and recruited the members.

Then, as the group grew, a few of us who were the first to join, took it upon ourselves to support him. We helped put the word out about our gathering of mostly stay home dads. We screen new recruits. Arrange timings and logistics for each monthly meeting. Show up on the day to meet and greet. Followed up with calls and check-ins with members to keep them connected.

And most of all, we communicated. We cracked jokes. Cried. Connected. Commiserated.

The rest, as they say, is community-building history.

It’s been a journey of many surprising and rewarding highs. Seeing connections formed. Friendships forged. Encouragements exchanged.

Community Formation Without The Founder

But, with all these “highs”, it’s important to recognise that community-building isn’t without its “hits” too.

The biggest was when, within less than a year of formation, the founder left us to venture overseas with his family for important humanitarian work. That left the gradually-growing community in the hands of the few of us.

For a while, things went well.

Positive word-of-mouth got around and our numbers continued to rise steadily. Like Goldilocks. Not too fast. Not too many. Just right.

Then, after Father’s Day 2024, our numbers exploded. In less than three months, we nearly doubled.

Today, what started in 2023 with just six members, has grown organically in three years to over 125! No biggie to most, 125. But anyone who’s ever tried to build a community from the ground-up will no doubt beg to differ.

Certainly, none of us expected the trajectory. It was a ‘happy’ problem. But one we couldn’t ignore.

Managing Community Growth

So we quickly put in place various frameworks to manage the growth.

We created group chat communities so the various members could join in conversations around topics they are drawn to.

These group chat communities could be centred around locations (so members can find other members who live close by). They could join base on stage of parenting (eg new dads, single dads, or dads with special needs kids). Hobbies and interests. Lifestyle.

With these setups, there was the need to also draw up guidelines for our community. To protect the safe space for honest, vulnerable conversations. And the need to screen new members to ensure they really are who they say they are (this is after all the 2020’s where scammers and opportunists abound!)

And as we grew, more people learned of our existence. Which meant more came knocking on our doors, including those who had their own interests and agenda. Media. Advocacy groups. Family-related organisations. Everyone wanted us to ‘join-up’. Work with them. Support their needs and causes.

Giddy highs in a way, knowing that we’re seen and our partnership eagerly sought by others.

But such “highs” of recognition (and others like our community’s exponential growth) sometimes have a way of distracting and obscuring the “hits” too.

When You Lead, You Sometimes Bleed.

This is the part where I talk about my “hits.”

First of all, I am not and have never seen myself as a natural leader. The few times in my past when I took up leadership generally ended in disaster and fractions. So I was contend to just be an eager-beaver member of causes and projects I believe in. And let someone else take the lead.

Take this community of dads for instance. I could just have easily started it myself. But no. Over the two years that we met, I slowly seeded the idea to the founder and was happy that, though he initially resisted, in the end, he capitulated. And invariably started something significant.

I was happy just to tag along.

Funny thing tho when one’s happy to tag along. One also gets drawn into the group in a big way. No complaints, don’t get me wrong. I genuinely believe in the importance and the power of community to strengthen us dads in our challenging parenting journeys. And I always believe no one should walk alone if they can find fellow sojourners who empathise.

What I didn’t count on though was how within another year and a half after the founder left, others in the core group also “left”, some overseas, some to focus on their family needs.

Suddenly I was “alone”. Even as the community expanded.

Suddenly it felt that the community’s rise and fall depended on me to keep it going. Which was antithetical to what an organic, ground-up community, ought to be. I shouldn’t have to shoulder it alone, and the community oughtn’t to succeed or fail whether I ‘do the job well’ or not.

Some days it felt like I was “bleeding” but I didn’t even know what hit me…

…To Be Continued

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