How to foster a culture of last-minute plans

A template for community building

View all templates here.

On a whim during the time we lived in Pittsburgh, I started a WhatsApp group called “last-minute kiddie plans” and invited a few friends with kids. The idea of the group was simple: if you’re doing an activity with your kids, and would welcome company, send a message to the group saying so. Basically, a group-chat-based casement window. Even though I was the one who started it, I was shocked by the exponential effect it had on our interaction with friends. Every visit to the playground became an opportunity to commune with other parents, every trip to the pizza store a potential playdate. The group also became a broader source of community support — people asked for parenting advice, or dropped off meals for parents that were recovering from surgery. The straightforward name and purpose of the group chat had a powerful grounding effect that unlocked a collective care. To date, the group has over 50 members and has exchanged over seven thousand messages.

When we moved to Philly, I missed the group so much that I started another one in my neighborhood here.

While this group focused on kids and parenting, I see it as a model that can just as easily be applied to other relationships: “last-minute friend plans,” or “last-minute co-working plans,” or “last-minute drinks.”

Not sure where to start? Here is a message we sent to friends:

hiya! starting a [chat app] group for messages like “we’re headed to [name of playground or attraction] if anyone wants to join” or “does anyone want to go to a [attraction] tomorrow? the weather is going to be bad” or “does anyone have ideas of things to do this weekend?” (other topics of conversation are allowed too)

the goal is to create more opportunities for casual meetups and for our friends to get to know each other.

feel free to join with this link / invite others!

[invite link]

Some additional tips:

• If possible, make invites to the group open and add the invite url to the group description for easy access.

• Make the goals of the group clear, but let tangential conversations flow even if it doesn’t fit those initial goals.

• Not all of our friends know each other, but we had a rule of thumb for ourselves that in the initial batch of invites, everyone should know at least 2 other people that weren’t us. After that, we let it grow naturally.

View the full post with more tips and templates for befriending neighbors and beneighboring friends: