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If there are no Friendship Guilds close to you, or you feel that maybe the local guild is getting a bit large, you can always start a new group. You don’t even need to have been at an FG meeting before. If you like the idea of starting a group, all the information you need is on this website. Below are some tips on getting started.

Choosing a Group Name. Think of a name for your group. You could name it after the neighborhood or locality its in. You can be as inventive as you wish.

Finding a meeting room. The first thing you need to do as Group Founder is find a venue for your groups meetings. There may be inexpensive meeting rooms, provided as a community service, available in your local library or community center. Churches and schools sometimes rent basements and staff rooms for meetings. For security reasons it is not advisable to use your personal home for public Friendship Guild meetings. Any venue that affords participants a degree of privacy from the general public is suitable.

Financing your Group. Your group should quickly become self supporting through contributions, but you may find at the beginning, that you personally foot the bill for room rental and advertising of the first meeting. A guild founder can usually reconcile this in view of the long term benefits. If however you end up feeling that you are personally paying a disproportionate share of expenses, you should disband the group. It is better to disband a group and participate in other groups, than it is to harm your own Friendship Guild experience.

Promoting your group. You should first list your new groups meeting location and times here at FriendshipGuild.org You can also list your group on social event promotion sites such as Meetup.com

Optimum Group Size. Ideally a group should be small enough that everyone at the meeting gets to share within the time constraints for the meeting. If we consider that the Speaker takes 15 to 20 minutes and members take up to 4 minutes each when sharing, we can get an idea of how many people can comfortably participate at a meeting. However, in practice, the speaker may not take that long, some members may speak for less time, and some may even pass. It doesn’t matter if a meeting ends early because everyone is done, but it is a little disappointing if not everyone who wishes to share, gets to share. If membership at a meeting is reaching a point where it impacts the quality of the meeting or even exceeds capacity of the meeting room, the group could decide to host a second weekly meeting. Or one of the members might like to split off forming another group.

Signage and Downloads. Below are some useful links to print the FG Preamble and signs to help people find your group meeting room. At the bottom is a blank logo that you can use to create a custom logo for your group, if you wish.