How-to: Questions to answer before starting a group

Questions to answer about starting a group on ACEsConnection: 

• Why do you want to start a group? Groups for discussions only don’t work well on this network. Groups that have a goal — e.g., to help transform a community to become trauma-informed, or to educate and share best practices among pediatricians — work well. 
• Who will join this group? How will you recruit them? 
• What will people do on this group? Share best practices? Work together virtually and face-to-face to make their community trauma-informed? What are some examples? In an ACEsConnection group, you have: A Discussion section where people work out issues together. A Comments section for short updates, events or to point out a new resource in the Pages section. A Text Box to provide information about an upcoming event or issue. A Pages section for shared lists, guidelines, histories, chronologies, white papers, archives, etc. 
• Do you have two or three people who can be community managers? Group community managers facilitate communications among their group's members. They provide relevant information (news, events, reports) for their group, coordinate the archival and working documents in the group's Pages section, and, if it's a city or county or state group, arrange formal and informal in-person meetups. They help the group decide its goals, help the group members take the small steps necessary to achieve those goals, and celebrate when those goals are achieved. Groups grow slowly; so, once a group is set up, it's likely that each community manager will spend no more than a half-hour to one hour a day on the group, for at least a couple of months, maybe longer. The ACEs Connection community managers train and mentor the groups' community managers, facilitate connections across groups, as well as among the members of ACEs Connection. 
• Are you in this for the long haul? If it’s a community that’s becoming trauma-informed, this is at least a five-year process, and the group will become integral to the community’s work.  

The first steps to create a group: 

• Write a short two- or three-sentence description of the group for the group “information” box, and run it by an ACEs Connection community manager for feedback. 
• Select an appropriate image [small and square]. 
• Create the group (an ACEs Connection community manager will help you do this to launch it on the network.) 
• Invite other community managers to join. 
• Community managers join their own group and the Community Managers group on ACEs Connection (this is where community managers from all the groups share information and help each other). 
• Community managers add appropriate lists, guidelines, histories, chronologies, etc., to the Pages section. (Perhaps borrowing guidelines or information from other groups…e.g., collective impact information, case studies, etc.) 
• Community managers add a few discussions. 
• Community managers add an event or publication to the Text box, with an image. 
• Community managers develop a three-month strategy and action plan, run it by an ACEs Connection community manager for feedback. 
• Recruit members.