If you’d like to set up (or update) a Buy Nothing private group on any social media platform. here's a road map that will guide you through the process. If the process below looks like more work than you bargained for, you can stop after step 2 and focus on building your Buy Nothing using our free custom-built app. Private groups are coming soon to the app, so you can start connecting there today, building connections and community right away without having to go through the entire process below (our app is designed to take care of these steps for you in a more streamlined fashion).
For an online Buy Nothing group, we think the easiest process looks like this:
For an online Buy Nothing group, we think the easiest process looks like this:
- Take the Buy Nothing Academy, available at www.buynothingproject.org/academy – This is one of our freely-given Buy Nothing gifts, a self-paced online course that empowers you up to build a strong Buy Nothing gift economy community.
- Download our free BuyNothing app (here for iPhone and here for Android) and set up your profile. Our app can be very useful for private Buy Nothing groups on all platforms, giving you and your group access to features built just for Buy Nothing communities that aren't available anywhere else. Visit our Build page for more about ways your group can put the app to use, www.buynothingproject.org/build.
- Set up a private group on your preferred social media platform. By "private group," we mean an online group that's set up and maintained by an individual who gets to set the group name and rules, and who also has the responsibility to add people, guide people to follow the rules, etc. Each platform has its own directions, rules, and specifications. Each social media company will walk you through the steps to setting up a group on their platform. Our document, Buy Nothing Project Private Group Growth Resources, will help answer your Buy Nothing-related questions about naming your group, growing your membership, and defining your community footprint. This document is useful for all social media platforms and also for Buy Nothing communities that connect offline. You can find it here.
- Build a description for your group, so people can see what you're all about, using this page: Buy Nothing Group Description.
- Get your copy of the Buy Nothing 10 Rules to load into your group's rules section.
- Once you have your group description and 10 Rules documents, customize them with your group’s name and upload them to the appropriate fields in your Buy Nothing online group. For instance, the Group Description fits right into Facebook’s Group Description field, and the 10 Rules can be copied from your download and uploaded into those 10 fields in a Facebook group.
- Create a Welcome post for your group. If the platform you're using for your group allows for pinned posts, you can use that to keep this post handy for new group members to see it. Welcome people to your Buy Nothing group, introduce yourself, give them any information you’d like to share about your local version of the Buy Nothing Project and include a link to All About the Buy Nothing Project. This is an online link tree we maintain to direct Buy Nothing participants to all of the important Buy Nothing Project resources. This will give your entire Buy Nothing community quick access to all sorts of helpful information. This is the only Buy Nothing Project page you’ll need to link to, making it fast and easy to set up a Buy Nothing group online. Your welcome post can be as simple as: "Welcome to Buy Nothing (your neighborhood here)! I'm (name) and I'm starting this group for our community because I want all of us to be able to connect to Give, Ask and share our Gratitude, Buy Nothing-style. Here's a web page with loads of info about how all of this works: www.buynothingproject.org/all-about-the-buy-nothing-project. Please let me know if I can answer any questions or help in any way. I'm so excited to get this started - Please post a Give, Ask or Gratitude of your own! Thanks for joining this group!" You're welcome to copy and paste this as a template to get you started, or you can write your own post up from scratch.
- Fill out our List Your Gift Economy form so you can be included in our worldwide Buy Nothing Gift Economy list, so people in your community can readily find your local gift economy and start sharing!
- If you’d like to use our banner, given to us by Crescent Moegling for use in Buy Nothing Project gift economies, you’re welcome to download this Buy Nothing banner, to signify you’re part of this social movement! Do not modify the banner in any way if you choose to use it.
Have questions? Please visit our Help Center, www.help/buynothingproject.org
Want to connect with other Buy Nothing Community Builders & Leaders? Please visit our Build page, www.buynothingproject.org/build for more resources.