Community Hosting 101

Tips for hosting your Private Community

Congratulations on setting up your community in the Buy Nothing app! Here are some tips.

Share your Group Link

Sharing your group link is easy! Just click on the 3 dots below the group description and then click on “Share Community” and copy the URL which you can then share anywhere.

Admit People into your Private Community

When new members click to join your private community, you will see a prompt below the community banner, indicating how many member requests you have pending. Click on that and from there you’ll see a list of pending members which you can either admit or deny access to the group.

Remove people from your Private Community

To remove a member from your private community, simply click on the 3 dots below your group description and view members. From there you can manage your membership queue and also remove members from your community. 

Post Tips in your Private Community

As a community Host, you have a special tool that allows you to post a Tip in your community. That tool is available to you in a drop-down menu when you choose your post type in the posting flow. For some great tips that have been helpful for all Community Builders over the years, please visit our Helpful Posts page for posts and images you’re welcome to use (and edit) for your community.

You are always welcome to post tips that are posted by the Buy Nothing Community (via copy pasting the text and screenshotting the post, or you can share the post in your community, too, via the post share tool).

Join The Host Hub

We have a private community for all Buy Nothing Hosts and we’d love for you to join! This is where you’ll be able to share best practices, ask questions, and provide peer-to-peer support. Please join the Host Hub today!

Report community-members in your Private Community

We’ve built this app to help reduce the burden of moderation for you. If there’s a post that you believe should be removed from your group, please report it by clicking on the 3 dots to the right of the post. The same goes for comments. You can also proactively nudge your community-members by reminding them when they violate our guidelines, which will often result in the community-correcting their post or comment. 

Helpful Posts for Community Engagement

We’ll all be able to share helpful posts for community engagement in the Host Hub, and here are some more Helpful Posts we’ve used over the years that do help bring community members back to the community for Giving, Asking and Gratitude. 

Where can I find flyers and other promo materials?

We’ve built a Buy Nothing private community (thanks, Katylin!) that’s just for flyers and promo materials, including cool gift tags, that you can download from the app. Please be sure to go over to the Flyers community which you’ll find here: Access the community here