Questions & answers

Really, the best thing that you can do as a Meetup Organizer is to stay in contact with your Members as often as possible. Many times, you'll find that you might come across a question that you don't know the answer to. Questions like:

“Shall we have a group dinner next week, or should we see a movie?”

or,

“Did people like last month's wine tasting, or was it a bust?”

In either case, as the Organizer, you can always just ask. Set up a Poll by clicking on the 'Polls' tab, or if your question's more open-ended, post it to your Group's Message Board and see what people say. Your members may surprise you with their wealth of advice. Don't forget: your Members are your greatest resource. If you're ever stumped about what to do for your next Meetup, odds are good a few of them have some ideas. And if you need to cancel a Meetup, or aren't going to be having one for a month or two, it's good to let them know.

When you stay in contact with your members, they'll not only feel more comfortable letting you know how they feel, but they'll also feel way more confident about attending your Meetups.

That said, there are a few things Organizers probably shouldn't bring up with their Members.

First and foremost, if you have a problem with another Member, it's never a good idea to air that conflict in any public forum on your Group. As the Organizer, it's important that your Members feel that they can come to you if they have a problem or an idea. And if you post a disagreement for all to see, that trust is hard to win back.

Secondly, it's a good idea never to bug your Members about a product or service they might not be interested in. If you organize a tennis Group and you've scored a good deal with a local sporting goods store, let them know! But if you organize a Group about dogs, odds are your Members probably won't want to hear about that same offer. When in doubt, post it to your 'Message Board,' if you have one, or your 'About Us' page.

For more first-hand advice on being a top-notch Organizer, you can speak to other Organizers around the world on the Organizer forum.

Every once in a while, as an Organizer, you may have a situation where one of your Members steps over the line. Maybe they're having a disagreement with another Member and they post it for the whole Meetup Group to see, or maybe they're spamming your Group about a great new 'work from home' opportunity.

In any case, the first step would be to contact them privately by clicking 'Send Email' from their Group Profile page. Let that member know as politely as you can that you didn't appreciate what they did. Most often, the member will apologize and thank you for bringing the misdeed to their attention.

If they don't though, and continue posting inappropriate content or sending inappropriate messages, the next step is to contact us at Meetup Support. You can let us know of any inappropriate behavior on the site by sending a message to abuse@meetup.com. Be sure to send us a link to the page containing the offensive content, or a copy of the email that you were sent. We'll take it from there.

When in doubt, contact Meetup Support.

An Organizer is in charge of his or her Message Board. Generally speaking, Meetup Support doesn't moderate the content that appears within a Group's message board unless that content violates an individual's privacy, or in some cases, Meetup's Terms of Service.

So as the Organizer, if somebody posts something spammy or otherwise inappropriate to your message board, you can remove it. To do so, click 'Delete' in the blue bar that appears above a post. Clicking 'Delete Thread' above the first post in a discussion will delete the whole discussion.

You can turn your Message Board on and off by doing the following:

1. From your Group's page, click on 'Group Settings'
2. Click 'Optional Features'
3. Scroll down to the "Message Board" section. From here you can set your message board to read only, read/write, or turn it off completely
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click 'Submit' to save your changes

Just so you know, Assistant Organizers also have the ability to moderate your Group's Message Board, so if any content is edited or goes missing, you might want to check with your Assistants.

The same general rules for moderating the content of your Group's Message Board also apply to moderating the content that's sent through your Group's Mailing List.

By default, if you set up a Mailing List for your Group, all Members of your Group will be able to send a message to that Mailing List. When a message is sent through the Mailing List, it appears directly in the email inbox of any Member of your Group that subscribes to it.

So what a lot of Organizers do is change the settings on their Mailing List so that any other message sent out by other Members of the Group has to be “approved” by the Organizer. This is sort of an extra step for Organizers, but it really helps your Members out a lot, particularly if your Group has a particularly active Mailing List.

Let's say though that something inappropriate does slip through your Mailing List. Well, when that happens it's pretty unfortunate, but since that message gets sent directly to the email inboxes of your Members, there's no way to remove all traces of it. You can, however, remove it from the archive that appears on your Group's page.

You can access the archive by clicking on the 'Mailing List' tab on the left hand navigation bar. Click on a message in the archive to select it, and then click 'Remove from Archive' to delete it.

“When” or “Why” to remove somebody from your Meetup Group is a tricky question, and it varies from person to person. The simplest answer is, if a Member of your Group is not getting along with others, or making you feel uncomfortable, then it's probably worth considering.

The important thing to remember is that as the Organizer, it's entirely up to you to decide when or under what circumstances to remove somebody. It's all about what makes you most comfortable, since it's more than likely you'll be the one in charge during your Meetups.