How does your Meetup help its members save money, make money, or cope in tough times?

I posted a video at http://tinyurl.com/6g... --
How does your Meetup help its members save money, make money, or cope in tough times?

Let me count the ways:

• By communicating, we arrange mutual transport sharing to save transport costs.
  
• By discussing prices of goods related to our hobby, we find the best deals.
  
• By getting together and having fun we take a break from the cares of the world.
  
• erm. no. - We don't rob banks. That would be silly.
  

Len

My group focuses on attending free or nearly free events around Orlando so I have not seen a decline in the number of people attending my events - but an increase! When times get tough one of the best things you can do is be surrounded by friends, laugh, relax, have fun, and get out and do something!

How don't we help folks save money? That is the very nature of our meetup Girls Just Wanna Have Funds based on Washington, DC.

We have meetups around how to save money, pay down debt while continuing to save for retirement.

Topics that we've discussed are:

1. Menu planning for the week or month
2. Coping during the recession with the market ups and downs
3. Shopping for the best deals on necessities and in retail
4. Career planning: making sure that we are keeping resumes fresh and updated while maintaining current positions
5. Keeping abreast of personal documents such as credit reports, health insurance docs
6. Checking bundled plans to make sure that you are saving and getting the most ie phone/cable/internet/wireless

We allow our members to suggest events near them so they don't have to drive as far. We also have most of our events at free locations, since many of our members have large families and can't afford $5-$10 per person admission costs.

I do a group exercise class. The Meetup helps out the members in numerous ways.

1. Group fitness classes are a much cheaper alternantive to 1-1 personal training. Cost wise in this economy that is a luxury not many can afford.

2. During class we discuss ways to save money on food, and other relevant items related to health and fitness.

3. Exercise helps distract the mind from our daily worries. It helps lower blood pressure with regular exercise.

4. It creates a nice encouraging enviornment since everyone there has the same goals, i.e. to lose weight, and become healthier.

I posted a video at http://tinyurl.com/6g... --
How does your Meetup help its members save money, make money, or cope in tough times?

As Jack from Eventbrite would say - There’s something to be said for jumping when everybody else is ducking. Assuming that the sky is not actually falling (which I have it on good authority it is not), times of economic downturn can be a great time to start a new business.

And that’s exactly the spirit we had on BizTechDay -a mega meetup in San Francisco. I think we delivered our promise had an amazing time. We brought 500+ small business owners and entrepreneurs together and learn how we can use Web 2.0 and Internet to grow our business.

I thank the community for your support and I am honored to be part of the San Francisco Meetup community. Go go go Scott!

My LA Agile & scrum meetup teaches lean software development practices to help software teams make it through lean times.

I posted a video at http://tinyurl.com/6g... --
How does your Meetup help its members save money, make money, or cope in tough times?

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My name is Stephen Lau, organizer of the Edmonton "Linked-In" Business Network.

We are getting organized with a strong core of people who are of various professions. I am looking at asking our group members to offer discounted services to other members who will return the favor for their own services/products.

There are many business networking groups, like BNI, that charge substantial annual dues for the privilege of being in a "referral" network. With the world economy as weak as it is now, it is important for our membership to join together to assist one another to succeed, as inexpensively as possible.

I host regular breakfast, lunch, and dinner meetings. There is excellent networking and no "hard-selling". We are building relationships that lead to sales. We don't sell for the sake of selling. We genuinely should trust our Meetup members and like them as people.

Meetup has improved various features of the website but I am not very pleased with the current "event formatting screen" on the site. The arcane "code" that is on the screen is cumbersome (the space where you type in your event details). That needs to improved. Limiting the "word count" is also counter-productive. I wish to see this restriction removed.

I think Meetup should also allow organizers to gather the contact information of its membership, with the permission of the membership (like an addressbook). It's very cumbersome to have to ask everyone for their contact information. If there is an emergency cancellation of an event, there is no way to pull up the membership's contact information easily. Not everybody carries around a Blackberry!

Those are my two cents.

Good luck to all in their Meetups!

Warm regards,
Stephen Lau, B.Com., LL.B.

www.linkedin.com/in/stephenlau

I posted a video at http://tinyurl.com/6g... --
How does your Meetup help its members save money, make money, or cope in tough times?

Rubber Stamping allows members to make thoughtful gifts for family and friends. It can be much cheaper to make a card or scrapbook than it is to buy something.

Also it saves on the cost of therapy -- getting together with a bunch of other people once a month to make something is therapeutic.

:) Join us!