Get paid to make friends. Seriously.
Whether your goal is to have a memorable weekend with one friend, to make a bunch of friends in your local area, or to build an entire online community empire, this post has ideas you can start using today — and some literally free money to fund your connection plans.
Get paid for building healthy communities (this is not a drill)
One of the best ways to make new friends who conveniently live within walking distance of your house is to get active on the other side of your front door. I’m not talking about going on solo runs, I’m talking about building healthy communities. Community builders are the glue that hold our neighborhoods together, and the good news is that anyone can do it — you don’t need a fancy certification, and you don’t need to have the most extroverted personality. You just need a good idea, the willingness to meet new people, and the follow-through to make your idea a reality.
The importance of community cannot be understated. Research shows that if a friend living within a mile of you becomes happier, it’ll give you a 25% increase in the probability of you becoming happier too. So it’s in your best interest to find a way to make the people around you happier! And as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, strong community ties in our immediate local area can also help us fend off loneliness and cope with crisis. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is: Spend more time building community and give the people in your closest proximity something to smile about.
One of the most inspiring projects I’ve been following over the last couple years is the Community Microgrant program, generously run by Kasley Killam at Social Health Labs. Each month, Social Health Labs gives a no-strings-attached microgrant of $1,000 to an individual in the U.S. who has an idea for connecting people in their local community. Past microgrant awardees have led projects like building an outdoor seating area for neighbors, creating and distributing welcome maps for new residents, collaborating on community gardens and farmers markets, and hosting craft-making gatherings. (This is the part where you write down these ideas… go ahead, grab your pen or screenshot this page…)
If you feel inspired to build IRL face-to-face friendships where you live, YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DO THIS. Learn more and apply today.
You’re eligible to apply if you are:
Based anywhere in the United States and your project is local
An individual community member, not representing an organization
Willing to have your project’s story shared publicly
Reading about the microgrant winners’ ideas always warms my heart. Here are a few of the ideas that ordinary folks JUST LIKE YOU have done to bring people together in friendship and the 3-dimensional face-to-face meatspace community. Drumroll, please… (click or tap to see the images bigger)
Connection Idea #1: A ‘Make Memories’ Welcome Map
Create a “Make Memories” welcome map of your neighborhood. Host an outdoor gathering to collect memories from folks in the neighborhood — ask children, the elderly, organizations, and other locals about the local places that are significant to them. Then compile those memories with the welcome map and share it with new residents when they move to your neighborhood.
Connection Idea #2: Parent Café
Create a parent café for parents to come together and talk about the issues that are most important to them where they can share their struggles and histories with each other. Creating this will provide social connections, support, stability and strengthen the community.
Connection Idea #3: Healthy Eating Together
Create an event to educate your neighbors about healthy nutrition. Organize local leaders to start a weekly farmers market and help people connect with their health and the neighbors around them. Two other versions this could take: a recipe-trading group for your neighborhood, or a Cookbook Club where people all cook a different recipe from the same cookbook then get together for a potluck to eat all the meals and share great conversation.
Connection Idea #4: Intergenerational Art Club
Since artwork is usually done alone, and many neighborhoods have only senior citizens in them, consider creating a space for seniors can gather together to create art and community with each other. You can even make it intragenerational by inviting seniors and kids or teens to get together and make art in community which fosters connection, support, fun, and emotional well-being for everyone involved.
Connection Idea #5: Community Chalkboard
If you live in a neighborhood where there are a lot of different languages spoken, consider creating a giant community chalkboard. A big title across the top of the chalkboard can say something like “Your fears erased here weekly” in all the languages from your neighborhood area. Leave out lots of chalk so everybody from kids to elders can write down their fears. At the end of each week, have a community member read the fears allowed at a designated time, and then erase them. Through sharing our fears — or even our dreams, our hopes, our best jokes, and our wild ideas! — you can bring everyone together and help people see each other's humanity.
Connection Idea #6: Birthday Brigade
Why not celebrate your birthday by organizing a generous birthday brigade? Pull together a bunch of local neighbors to volunteer to create birthday bags with toiletries and handwritten cards for a local low income residents. Volunteers can work in groups to deliver the bags to seniors or anybody who is in need, to help them feel seen and appreciated as part of the community. Bonus: the volunteers get to create bonds with each other while also caring for the community.
Connection Idea #7: … keep scrolling, it’s down below in the bonus section
If you’ve held yourself back from creating that rollicking block party hootenanny because you didn’t have the cash — you have no more excuses. 😉 💰
Did you skip over the application link above? Here it is again. Learn more, apply today to fund your community-building idea, and make some beautiful magic happen on your block, in your neighborhood, or across your entire corner of town.
Building online community
If you’re already running an online community or want to learn more skills that could support you in running a community in the future, this one’s for you. My esteemed colleague (that means she’s a total badass) and friend Carrie Melissa Jones is the pro to know when it comes to all things community, especially if you’re running an online community or a brand community.
Check out her newsletter for guidance on building online brand communities plus research and morale boosts for folks working in community management in-house at a company or non-profit. Oh, and if you subscribe at this link, you’ll get her free kit of event ideas and facilitation tips too. Aaaand she has a Youtube channel where she drops mics full of guidance and advice about running online communities. Did I mention that she also wrote the book Building Brand Communities? I’m telling you, she’s a boss.
And don’t forget: As I mentioned in my blog post about making new friends online, make sure to choose the right sandbox to play in. The biggest, flashiest, most crowded online communities aren’t necessarily the ones where people make the deepest, most meaningful connections. Sometimes a smaller, intimate, or even closed-door community centered on a specific need, niche, identity, or field of practice is the best place to find your people and form true and lasting bonds.
Bonus: Road trip activity guide
Now that you’ve make those new friends, maybe you wanna hit the road together. Rather than blank out or start from scratch, check out this stellar road trip template that was sent in from Kelly, a member of the We Should Get Together newsletter community. Kelly says:
“A highlight I want to share is that I created a Google Doc for “field trips” to local cities. Each field trip consists of food, a thing to do, and a hidden gem/lookout point.”
On a recent trip, her food highlight was getting ramen, the activity adventure was doing archery (HOW KATNISS IS THAT?) and then checking out a park. All in one day!
In that book I wrote, I told y’all about the research proving that a mini-adventure can gorilla-glue your brand-new friendships — but guess what, mini adventures are a superfood boost for your long-term friendships too. If you’ve been stumped for ideas, this darling day trip idea generously shared by Kelly just might be what you’ve been waiting for. Try it out and let me know how it goes.
Recap
✨ Ok, that’s all the goodness this blog post can hold. Wasn’t that better than scrolling social media and falling down a rabbit hole about something that causes you anxiety?! Whether you choose to set your sights on growing a deeper friendship with just one person, or getting all your neighbors on a first-name and inside-joke-sharing basis, the importance of community is what it’s all about. Building healthy communities is how we’ll make all our lives better, and the good news is, you don’t have to do it alone. Invite the folks in your apartment building or neighborhood to join you, and see what beautiful memories and rituals you can all make together. One day, you’ll be one of these success stories too.
