So many communities are held together with the strength of basically one person making all the invitations and remembering everyone's hobbies and taking the time to talk to new people
& that one person n e v e r gets the credit they should bc people don't recognize emotional labor as work
Addendum: volunteer organizations work so much better when this work is distributed among many people as part of their official job descriptions
In high school when I was working the Obama campaign by far the most effective tactic we had for volunteer retention was to have communal meals before phonebanking sessions
@storytam
When I was more interested in building and managing online communities I had a nascent theory about what I called 'church ladies'. the people who did all the unglamorous behind the scenes work, and traded mostly in inter-group social capital.
I figured you could pretty easily gauge the health of a community just by identifying who those individuals were and what their stress to enthusiasm ratio was.
& like, it was just simple potluck style stuff where people (mostly women let's be real!) would bring their dishes and Costco platters
But it wasn't the food that brought people back, and it wasn't really the volunteering. It was getting to sit down with other people and talk and hang out.
It worked because we put in the time and energy to make that a welcoming space, to introduce new friends and listen to boring stories and make each other feel seen
That doesn't happen enough.