Someone recently asked me what the biggest challenge is for a new community getting started. I didn’t think much about it and was surprised by my own answer: scheduling.

I’ve seen many young groups struggle—or never get off the ground—simply because they can’t get time on the calendar.

The first gathering or call often happens on a wave of initial excitement, but then it gets tricky. The group tries to find a new time over email. Someone sends a long survey with lots of options. Some people respond; some don’t. Before long, it’s clear that none of the options work for everyone. What now? Maybe there’s a second attempt. But chances are another call never happens—or it happens only with a small sub-group. Already, the initial enthusiasm is starting to fade…

For young groups, a consistent rhythm of touch-points is crucial. But many groups never get over the scheduling cliff and, as a result, never develop momentum or consistency.

I see scheduling-related failure particularly among sub-groups within larger networks: eight people want to form a book club; it fades after two meetings. Five members want to form a peer-support circle; they never find a date to get started. The climate working group stays an email chain. These groups are small enough that they need a majority of people to show up—especially at the beginning—so scheduling is crucial.

At its core, the biggest risk of scheduling is that it drains the energy of volunteer leadership. Early community leadership may be energized by the group’s potential, but that motivation is at risk of being worn down by logistics. Early groups depend on the energy of a few people to get things started and keep them consistent, so frustration with scheduling can effectively mean the end of the group.

Here is what I learned about community scheduling:

• Don’t try to find the perfect time. Don’t ask people what times work best for them through surveys.

• Instead, make a best-guess proposal. I’ve found that if we give people just one choice, the ball is in their court and they often make it work. This shifts the labor onto the group. In contrast, when I send out a survey of possible dates, the onus of finding the perfect date is on me.

• Community leaders are often so focused on others that they forget to start with their own needs. A substantial part of community leadership is making sure the group’s gatherings are on the calendar. And yet I’d argue that this responsibility comes with a privilege: you get to choose a time that works well for you.

• If your proposal doesn’t work for a majority, make another proposal. Keep it simple, keep it light, keep it fast.

• Go ahead if 80% can make it. Don’t try to find a date that works for everyone—it’s an impossible mission.

• Once your group has decided on a rhythm (for example monthly), propose a recurring slot. Send out calendar invites for the next 12 months. Adjust along the way if needed.

• Schedule as far ahead as possible.

• Stick to the date; don’t reschedule. Sometimes, on the morning of a call, several group members will send apologies and someone will suggest finding another date. In my experience, it’s better to stick with the rhythm and hold the call. If this is a recurring call, there will be another one soon.

• Whenever possible, use the last part of a call to share a date proposal. It’s much easier for everyone to quickly check their calendars than to do it async over email or chat.

Scheduling in community isn’t trivial. It’s not about finding the perfect date, but about building momentum and a stable rhythm. And it’s about making sure you, as the organizer, don’t frustrate yourself with logistics before you even get started.

What do you think?

Till next time - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: We’re exploring and celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fab, co-founder of the Together Institute. We work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

At my in-laws’ home in India, the framed photos of ancestors - grandparents and great-grandparents - hang above the living room. I’ve seen this in many Indian homes, often with garlands around the frames, and encountered this in many cultures across the globe.

It makes intuitive sense to me: to honor the people who shaped us and on whose shoulders we stand. And it makes me wonder: what is the role of honoring the “ancestors” of a community? In community terms, ancestors might mean the people who previously took on leadership roles, maybe helped found the group, and contributed significantly to the whole in some form.

Given how many communities rely on volunteer leadership—and how many volunteer leaders burn out—I suspect that honoring past leadership could be a source of motivation and a gentle form of reciprocity.

What might honoring past community leadership look like?

• We continue to list previous leaders on our website, with a note of gratitude.

• When people transition out of leadership roles, we take time to celebrate them publicly and thank them for what they’ve done. We share their photos with notes of appreciation in our chat groups.

• We do an intentional handover between generations of leadership, with the incoming leaders learning from—and thanking—the outgoing ones.

• When we tell the story of how the community came to be, we intentionally include the names of people who held leadership roles in the past (even if it’s a lot of names).

Why might it matter?

• It shows that we—as a collective—truly value community leadership.

• And that, in turn, makes future leadership more appealing.

• Community leadership can be frustrating and exhausting. But the hardest part is when it goes unnoticed and unacknowledged. Who thanks people in leadership while they are in roles of responsibility? This might or might not happen. But we can build structures that ensure their service is celebrated—at the very least—after.

• Communities—generally speaking—are not great at passing practical knowledge from one generation of leadership to the next. Much isn’t documented and/or gets reinvented every time. Honoring past leadership makes people with hard-won experience more likely to be available for questions and to support in a more advisory capacity.

• Sometimes, community leaders (especially founders) have a hard time letting go and passing the baton to the next generation. A culture and rituals of honoring could make that transition easier.

I can’t say that I speak from much personal experience. At Sandbox, we had for many years an unfortunate dynamic of past leadership leaving in conflict or simply fading into the night. I feel there is a price for that.

How does this resonate with you all?

Till next time - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: We’re exploring and celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fab, co-founder of the Together Institute. We work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

Last year, together with the incredible folks at Huddlecraft, we designed Wasan Huddles—peer-driven learning journeys. At one point, a colleague asked me, “Will you participate in a Huddle yourself?” I realized I hadn’t even considered that option. But thanks to that nudge, I did. I joined the “Making The Case For Relationships” Huddle, which was so marvelously facilitated by Christine Lai, Meg Busse, Melanie Kahl, and Rachel Sinha.

And what a joy it was to be a participant—not the host, but the one being hosted. I could simply show up to the calls, not worry about anything and soak up the experience.

As a community weaver, my default is to organize and hold space for others. Yet, I keep forgetting how it’s not only nice, but actually crucial to be hosted myself:

• This is how I deepen my craft: I learn so much from watching others host a community or facilitate a gathering

• This is how I recharge: It’s energizing and motivating to be in a well-designed, well-hosted community experience.

• This is how I get inspired: As a participant, I can observe the deeper dynamics of what it means to be in community, which gives me new ideas to carry into my own work.

I see a similar tendency in other community people: we are so used to holding spaces for others that this becomes our default. As many weavers continue to burn out (and I’ve gone down that road too in the past), I wonder whether intentionally making space not only to host, but also to be hosted, helps fill all of our cups and keeps us a bit healthier.

What do you think?

Till next time - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: We’re exploring and celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fab, co-founder of the Together Institute. We work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

Over the past few months I’ve found myself in conversations with people who are weaving networks made up of organizations—for example, a regional network of community foundations, or a global network of impact incubators.

Those conversations sparked a curiosity in me. Something in the quality of organizational networks feels different, somehow less alive than human networks. But how are they different? And what might help organizational networks come more alive? (In this post I’m using “network” and “community” interchangeably; for more nuance, see here).

Here is how I’m making sense of it:

1) The type and quality of relationships is different. Community is, at its core, relationships. But relationships between organizations are not the same as relationships between people. If you’ve read Yuval Noah Harari’s work, you’ll be familiar with the idea that human cooperation is enabled by shared stories—and one of the most powerful of these stories is the “organization.” Organizations aren’t physical realities; they’re abstract inventions that help many humans coordinate. They aren’t living beings, but made up of living beings. That distinction matters: relationships between organizations are ultimately relationships between abstractions, often mediated through agreements, contracts, and formal roles. What can get lost is the personal, emotional texture that makes human-to-human relationships alive.

2) The motivation to participate is different. Because organizations are abstract entities, they can’t participate in a network directly—they delegate employees to participate on their behalf. And the motivation of those humans may come from a different place. In many human communities, participation is voluntary: if people don’t get energy or value from it, they naturally disengage. That creates a kind of honesty (and often a large “third circle” of mostly inactive members). When someone participates on behalf of an organization, participation is shaped by an employment contract, salary, and a sense of obligation. They may show up because it’s part of their job—even when it’s not fully aligned with their own interests or energy. That can create very different (and sometimes strange) community dynamics.

3) The mode of participation is different. I’ve observed that organizations often relate to networks as service providers and see themselves as consumers of those services—especially when membership fees are involved. That makes sense: it mirrors how organizations typically interact with other organizations (“I pay you; I expect something in return”). In a thriving community, participants ideally don’t show up primarily as consumers, but as co-creators and co-owners. They may still contribute financially, but not as payment for services—rather, to support the shared purpose and collective wellbeing. This mindset shift can be challenging for humans, but it’s even harder for organizations.

Creating human-centric networks of organizations

For all of the reasons above, I think the potential of organizational networks often falls short. They can lack the “aliveness” that human-centric networks generate, and they struggle to unlock the same depth of energy and participation.

And yet, I think there’s a relatively simple workaround: even when we’re weaving a network of organizations, we can focus on humans—not entities.

What might that look like?

• Make warm, personal invitations. Even if an organization delegates people into the network, reach out to them directly and invite them as human beings.

• Humanize participation as much as possible. Invite people to show up with more than their job title. Focus on the whole human, not just the role.

• Offer genuine choice about how to participate. Ask what role they want to take, and make it a guilt-free option to be a passive observer in the third circle.

• Create optional pathways for co-creation (for example, Stewardship roles). Set expectations early in onboarding that this isn’t about consuming services—it’s about co-creating together.

• Ask participants to personally agree to the shared agreements.

• And maybe: Invite people to remain part of the network even if they change or leave their organizations.

What do you think of this? What’s been your experience weaving networks of organizations? Would love to hear!

A special thanks to Rosie Funder and Mari De Liseo for their inspiration and many great conversations around this topic!

Till next time - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: We’re exploring and celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fab, co-founder of the Together Institute. We work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

Dear friends, colleagues, readers and fellow community weavers in service of transformation

Christine, Michel and myself have taken the last few weeks to look back on our Together Institute engagements in 2025, had introspective conversations with our inspiring colleagues Corina Angelescu and Letícia Schuli, and intentionally spent time to zoom out and zoom in.

As we enter the year of the Fire Horse, we find ourselves in a moment of great uncertainty and unknowing. As the sentiment of urgency and collapse continues to grow around us, we wonder what is most in service of these times. We are firmly committed to a more beautiful future our hearts know is possible. We believe that relationships of care and collective action are both a crucial ingredient of and path toward those futures. And yet, so much remains unclear.

What we do know is that many current approaches to social impact aren't fully meeting this moment. Simply doing more, faster, and harder won't solve the problem. But what are approaches to transformation that actually fit these times? And how do we adopt them—not just in language, but in actual practice?

We don’t know.

And yet, we have some hunches and many curiosities. We believe that questions can be powerful guides in confusing times and have gathered five questions that will guide us in 2026. They share an overarching theme: What's the role of togetherness in times of collapse, and what types of togetherness will help us transform into more beautiful futures?

We wanted to share them with you all, as an invitation and in the hope that we will get to explore them together with you, in conversations, in projects and in community, in the months and years to come.

Curiosity #1: In times of urgent action, what’s the role of not doing?

Everywhere we look in the social change ecosystem, there is a sense of ever increasing urgency, ever increasing work loads, ever increasing demands, relentless acceleration. Many people are tired, many on the edge of burn out. Yet, people keep pushing on and working even harder. Gathering agendas become ever fuller.

It’s in this context that we keep coming back to Bayo Akomolafe’s quote: “The times are urgent, let’s slow down”. As this article lays out, this seems especially relevant for the year of the Fire Horse: ‘Xiaohuan Zhao, a professor in Chinese studies at the University of Sydney, says “rather than predicting disaster, traditional readings frame the fire horse year as a period where heightened energy needs to be managed wisely. Slowing down before making major decisions, staying grounded, and cultivating emotional steadiness are … key ways to navigate the year’s momentum”, he adds.’

So our questions are: In times that demand a lot of doing, what is the role of being? In times when nobody has time for anything, what’s the value of creating spacious experiences and generous invitations? Is space for being now an unnecessary luxury or a crucial ingredient for success?

Curiosity #2: How do we create the conditions for meaningful collaborations?

Most of us likely agree that systemic solutions won’t happen in silos and that collaboration is crucial. And yet, when we closely observe communities and networks that are set-up to facilitate collaborations, few such collaborations actually happen and even fewer sustain over time. People say they want to collaborate, but in reality it rarely happens. Many “working groups” struggle to get things done and often are more a drain of energy than a source of it. Meanwhile, collaborations set-up by funders often become performative: people show up not because they want to intrinsically, but because it makes sense for them to do whatever strengthens their chances of getting funding in the future.

So we wonder: What are the enabling conditions that allow healthy collaborations to emerge naturally? How can we support people to feel safe to collaborate? What is a healthy timeline for collaborations to emerge in? And what role do caring relationships play for transformative collaborations?

Curiosity #3: What is the role of leadership in communities?

Decentralization has been en vogue in the social impact space for the past few years, and for good reasons: we recognize that empowering people to take leadership and to co-create is enormously important and powerful for long-term sustainability. It unlocks deeper sources of energy and builds co-ownership. And yet, we feel it’s incomplete. In our projects, we keep seeing how communities without clear leadership at the core struggle. Yes, communities need to be co-created. And yet they struggle without strong vision, creative clarity, and someone role modeling values and culture. Instead, communities waste energy in consensus-making that doesn’t satisfy anyone.

We are curious: What kind of leadership is required for communities to flourish? Is there a middle way between centralized and decentralized, and what is it?

Curiosity #4: Is community work essentially energy work?

So many collective projects fall short of their potential because they don’t sustain. Last year, in project after project we kept talking about “energy”: What are sources of energy? And how can we help unlock energy? Communities are often volunteer-driven: people are there because they want to, not because they have an employment contract or are paid to show up. And while they might join initially for a variety of reasons, they only keep coming back if they get more energy from the collective than they give.

So, if the flow of energy is so essential, what are sustainable sources of energy? How does a collective ensure energy surplus for itself and its members? How is that surplus best distributed? And how is organizational energy (such as money, paid staff, centrally provided programming and perks) different from intrinsic sources of energy in each member?

Curiosity #5: Who feels courageous enough to fund transformational work that can’t be measured?

Over the years, we’ve been part of many conversations about the systemic barriers of collective approaches. And they all land on the same issue: money. Why? Because collective approaches invest in relationships, and relationship outcomes can't be easily measured. Very few funders are willing to invest in the relational infrastructure for social change—and in the current climate, even fewer. Some exceptionally bright people, like our friends at Fito Network and David Jay, are working hard to change that by making the case for relational investments.

And yet we wonder: Who are the resource holders who intuitively understand the transformative power of relationships, care, belonging and how all these elements enable collective action? And who of those feel safe enough to invest into this work without needing traditional metrics? Who trusts that relationships around a shared purpose are the soil from which action will emerge from?

How do these questions resonate with you?

We hope these questions spark conversations or deepen existing ones. How do they resonate with you? We’d love to hear your reflections. Please leave a comment here or email us at hello@together-institute.org

Thank you for being on this journey with us

To all our companions on this journey -- the fellow community weavers, the fellow experimenters in togetherness, the fellow relational practitioners -- committed to centering care in the social change space: Thank you. We see you and your work strengthens us all.

Here is to a year of courage, care and curiosity!

Christine, Michel & Fab

Credits: Post co-created by Christine Lai, Michel Bachmann, Fabian Pfortmüller and with valuable edits and suggestions by Corina Angelescu and Letícia Schuli.

Last year, Sandra Ortiz Diaz and I were preparing a Wasan session with Alison Lin and Elissa Sloan Perry from Change Elemental. And to open our call, Alison invited us to speak to the following prompt as part of a check-in:

I am…

My people are…

My purpose is…

(Alison and her colleagues had learned them from Monica Dennis and The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and slightly modified them).

I loved the prompts. They were both simple and incredibly deep at the same time, allowing me to answer where I felt comfortable. And the second part - my people - has continued to resonate within me. Who are my people?

The question has made me think of different concentric circles (is everything in my life about concentric circles?). The center and the middle circle were pretty straightforward: family and close friends. What surprised me, and what continues to stay present with me, is the outer circle, the broader feeling of “my people”.

Thanks to Alison’s prompt, I realized two things:

First, “Who are my people?” is a great prompt to start a community with. If you want to create community, but not sure where to start, ask yourself who your people are. And then start bringing them together.

Second, I realized that community weavers are my people: humans dedicated to creating community. People weaving the relational web in all of its forms and variations. They are my people. I want to belong to them. I want to support them. I want to be part of them. I love them.

So if you are a community weaver (or a network builder or ecosystem catalyst or whatever term you might resonate with), here is a little love letter to you:

Dear Community Weaver

I see you.

I see what you’re trying to do.

I see the value, the joy, and the beauty you’re bringing to this world.

I see how you are transforming the world for better.

I see how much you do for others. How you listen. How you care. How you are present. How you hold spaces for others. How you create spaces of connection, courage and healing. How you really want to know people and how you take care of them when they are not doing well.

I see how you do so much of this from behind the scenes. I see how you continue to show up without recognition or pay. I see how you struggle to make a livelihood with this type of work. I see how many of you, many of us, burn out doing this, giving, giving, giving.

To me, you’re artists, you’re relational social entrepreneurs, you’re humble leaders who care for the social fabric that holds us all together.

Your work matters, even if it doesn’t fit into any neat boxes, even if there are no clear sentences to describe it, even if we can’t capture it in impact metrics, even if the outcomes are invisible. Your work matters and it’s worth celebrating, now more than ever. You are in service to life, to all of us!

You are my people. I see you, I appreciate you and I want to be in service to you. You take care of others and I want to contribute to you being taken care of, as well. May my writing, my work with Together Institute, Community Weaving, Wasan Network and other projects, uplift and strengthen you.

Thank you for caring!

Who are your people?

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to Entangled, exploring the people, insights and practices that help communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

Over the past few months, I’ve been having inspiring conversations with César Salazar about community leadership. César currently chairs Sandbox, a community I co-founded in 2007. And in our conversations one theme keeps coming up: how confusing community leadership can be.

Community leadership is confusing because it exists on a spectrum of power. On one side is traditional, centralized leadership, where a single leader decides and others follow. On the other side is fully decentralized leadership, where power is distributed across the whole group as much as possible. Everything is co-created. Everyone has power to shape things. The leader’s role then focuses on facilitating shared decision-making and supporting others.

In Sandbox, we’ve experienced the full spectrum: the community started very centralized (led by a few co-founders), became increasingly decentralized (enabling chapter leaders), and then—as the group went through a moment of deep crisis and lost all centralized structure and leadership—was forced to become fully distributed. Since then, a more lightweight structure has re-emerged at the center and its leaders are playing with different expressions of community leadership.

What we have noticed is that many community leaders—ourselves included—naturally shy away from traditional leadership. The flaws are obvious. We see daily examples of why this approach doesn’t serve the collective. It’s fundamentally about power over people. Community is different because it’s not a hierarchy. A political or corporate leader tells people what to do. A community leader facilitates people who are there by choice. It’s power with.

So, many of us community weavers end up on one side of the spectrum: We put ourselves fully in service of the collective. Leadership essentially becomes about facilitating co-creation circles and deep listening. It decentralizes power from the individual leader to everyone in the community.

Decentralized leadership clearly has many benefits: It centers humility and service to the collective. It’s relational and enables others. It creates shared ownership and identity. And yet, we feel that decentralized leadership has serious limitations.

Limitations of decentralized leadership: being vague & right

Ross Baird - a friend and former colleague - frequently quotes a principle that has become central to my life. Ross says: “It’s better to be specific and wrong, then vague and right”. And in our conversations, César and I realized that this also applies to community leadership.

Much of decentralized community leadership is about being vague and right. It’s about finding some foggy middle ground that everyone will be ok with.

Here are some limitations of decentralized decision-making:

• It lacks clarity: Co-creative processes don’t tend to converge on a small number of clear decisions and they often bring up a ton of ambiguity. Imagine a Miro board full of post-its, providing so many different directions a project could take.

• It sometimes creates suboptimal outcomes: Co-created solutions tend to focus on the shared middle ground, prioritizing compromises and group harmony over strong, individual ideas.

• It’s exhausting and slow: In the spirit of hearing and honoring every voice, co-creation processes often go on for much longer than they need to. They suck up all the energy out of the room. In an effort to be inclusive, we keep circling and circling about the same issues. And at the end, we come out exhausted, often with a result nobody is too excited about and just glad the process is over.

• Leaders mute their own perspectives: In an attempt to be a truly inclusive and humble leader, I have often censored my own opinions. Because of my positional power in the group, I intentionally tried not to dominate the conversations and gave space to everyone else’s opinion, while keeping my own muted.

• It invisibilizes and demotivates leadership: Much of community weaving happens behind the scenes. A culture of co-creation creates a narrative that everyone is contributing in equal terms. This is, of course, not true. Contributions within communities vary widely—a few people contribute most. That narrative also ignores the enormous work required to design, facilitate, and operationalize co-creation processes. I have found this demotivating in the past. It’s important to be a humble leader, but is it sustainable for a humble leader to never feel seen and recognized for their work?

• Most people don’t want to co-create: In my experience, only a small group of people wants to actively shape the community. Most other people are happy for someone else to decide and move things forward.

Benefits of centralized leadership: being specific & wrong

Even though we are surrounded by examples of unhealthy centralized leadership these days, César and I felt that categorically labelling centralized leadership as bad in the community context is too binary. In fact, we believe a community can benefit tangibly from mindful centralized leadership:

• Long-term vision: A community leader might carry personal clarity on how the group can evolve.

• Creativity: The strongest ideas are not always co-created. A community leader might be the “source”, bringing creative clarity to projects.

• Agency & Speed: A central leader can make decisions quickly and get things done in a much more timely manner than a bigger group.

• Motivation: As a community leader, it’s rewarding to bring my own voice, act on my visions and ideas and be appreciated by the rest of the group.

Risks of centralized leadership: being specific & wrong

Unsurprisingly, centralized leadership also has significant limitations. The risks for the group are obvious: the leader might make decisions that don’t benefit the collective.

But there’s also a less appreciated risk for community leaders themselves. Speaking my own truth in a deeply relational environment while being in a position of formal or informal power is scary. It risks alienating fellow community members and damaging my friendships and status in the group. For many community leaders, these relationships are the main reason we do this work. This might be a risk many of us aren’t willing to take.

César suggested that a group can develop safety mechanisms to make centralized leadership safer—such as giving the community simple processes to veto a decision or vote the leadership out.

What’s the middle way of community leadership?

You can probably see where we are headed with this. Clearly, neither extreme on the spectrum is ideal by itself. Ideally, we’d have a bit of both—a space in between. But that space is very undefined. We don’t even have language for it, no well-known role models, no template. It feels like uncharted territory.

In this middle ground, there are no simplistic binaries to follow (just decide! just co-create!). Instead, it feels more like a dance between two elements—a constant sensing and playful integration of seemingly contradictory perspectives. How can we both deeply value others’ opinions and also value our own? How can we be both humble and strong at the same time? How can we be both slow, patient listeners and keep moving forward? When is being specific and wrong in service of the collective, and when is it not?

This nuanced type of leadership has personal agency, clarity, and direction. It’s energizing for the leader and the people around them. And yet the clarity doesn’t come at the cost of the collective—it makes the collective better off.

Exploring 3 community leadership practices that dance in-between

So far the theory, but how does this show up in practice? In my next few posts I’ll be exploring different types of leadership that I believe playfully integrate centralized and decentralized leadership:

• Leadership by proposal: The community leader as the group’s main resolver of ambiguity.

• Leadership by invitation: The community leader’s role to pro-actively and personally invite people to contribute.

• Leadership by role-modeling: The power of a community leader to shape culture and embody a group’s values.

How have you been playing with the spectrum of centralized and decentralized community leadership? I’d love to hear!

A huge thank you to César Salazar for the energizing conversations and his community wisdom that inspired much of this post!

In community - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to Entangled, exploring the people, insights and practices that help communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

I have been weaving communities and convening people around shared purpose for almost 25 years now. I have learned so much about this work by doing it. I have written 100+ blog posts, co-created two open-source frameworks, and I’m grateful to be learning alongside incredible practitioners and friends. And yet, I continue to be mystified by it all. Almost every day I find myself having no answer to even the most basic community question. So much about community continues to feel like a big mystery to me.

Over the years I have been looking for simple formulas that I can apply. Parts of me wants to make this work clear and repeatable, find a reliable blueprint and then allow anyone to replicate it and cover the world with beautiful communities.

But somehow the notion of community has been resisting all my attempts at wrestling it into definitive form. Sure, there are patterns, there are templates, there are elements I have learned to pay attention to over the years. But whenever I get too attached to these patterns, I end up with a soulless project, a transactional social network, a mechanistic reduction of the real thing.

I see a lot of community weavers within organizations struggle with this. Their institutional cultures, with their OKRs and mechanistic mindsets, require them to provide reliable pathways to pre-defined success. And against their own instincts, the internal weavers end up creating structures that are clear, but have lost its human essence and potential.

I’m starting to see the work of community weaving as spiritual. It requires me to continuously reconnect to the deeper essence. That at its core, community is about love, friendship, kinship and oneness. And that, in tiny, tiny ways, a better world becomes possible when we are connected in such environments of mutual care.

Whenever I forget this, I get lost, no matter how good my templates.

And even when I do remember this essence, the path to get there seems to be a mysterious dance. A constant listening. A playing with the notes until we find resonance together.

I will surely continue to look for patterns. And hopefully, as I grow older, I will learn to hold them lightly as I dance with the ongoing mystery.

Hugs - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to Entangled, exploring the people, insights and practices that help communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

In a recent conversation with David Dietz, Director of Impact for NEXUS Global, we observed a paradoxical dynamic: many purpose-driven networks exist to bring people together to collaborate. Yet, in our experience, getting people to collaborate isn’t straightforward. We especially marveled at the challenges of “working groups”, when members form a sub-group to work on a new project together.

At some point, in a network’s evolution, the urge arises to not simply talk about the shared purpose, but to do something about it. This especially tends to arise at big gatherings. Conversations reveal untapped opportunities for impact, people get excited and someone suggests to form a working group or a project team.

In theory, these working groups are perfectly set-up to drive collective action: they have a clear purpose, shared context and they often bring together a diverse group of people with relevant expertise. What more can you ask for?

While I see many powerful collaborations emerge in networks, almost none of them come from working groups (or similar structures). In my experience, very few working groups actually get things done. Some drive short-term projects. But surprisingly few shared projects sustain impact over time. (I’m talking particularly about new & shared projects in a network, not collaborations of members on existing projects).

So why is that? Here are 3 potential reasons:

Change-makers have extremely full plates

In many impact networks, people join working groups with genuine interest to contribute, but little bandwidth to get things done. This is especially true in networks where members are in some form of leadership position or have their own project or venture. They have a clear mission: to advance their organization or project. Given their leadership positions, they have little capacity to take on significant additional roles. At the same time they believe in the bigger mission and see the opportunity to be involved with related initiatives. That’s how they meet relevant peers, that’s how they identify emerging trends.

So when a working group forms around a shared project in the energy transition space, and I have my own project in that space, I’ll be curious to see where it goes. I’m happy to contribute in a light-touch way. But ultimately, my priority will be to advance my own project.

Collective action needs pro-active leadership

In my experience, working groups fail when there aren’t one or two people who feel called (and empowered!) to lead.

There’s much talk about the power of decentralization these days—a growing assumption that if you simply bring the right people together, great things will emerge. But my experience shows that collective action rarely arise spontaneously from newly formed groups. It requires proactive leadership. Sure, decentralization can happen over time, but who helps build a decentralization practice? Who coordinates next steps? Who helps the collective understand roles? Who follows up and commits to follow-through?

The leadership question loops back to point 1: Assuming each project is a universe unto itself, with infinite potential tasks, who will have the energy, interest and bandwidth to proactively drive a newly formed project forward?

Most networks are not set-up to manage collective impact projects

When members don’t step up to lead, the network organizer often becomes the de facto project manager. This can create an unhealthy dynamic. Members shift from co-creators who organize themselves to passive participants / consumers, waiting to be organized. All of a sudden, the network manager’s role becomes about chasing people for their deliverables.

Most networks also vastly underestimate how much time collective projects demand. They might treat working groups as side projects that emerge from annual summits. But driving real action requires significant energy, focus, and resources. A central organizer pulling together diverse stakeholders to drive a project forward can work. Project Together in Germany is a great example: they mobilize diverse change-makers around a shared goal. But the crucial difference is that they don’t run purpose-driven campaigns as side projects—it’s their main gig. That requires dedicated staff and resources.

Collective action, of course, does happen

Here are some instances that seem to have a higher chance of success:

• When the working group has one or two people who take on pro-active leadership roles. Often they happen to be in a moment of transition and have bandwidth to make this not just another project, but to make it their main project. Or they are resourced from their own organization to take on the leadership role as part of their day job, not as a volunteer gig on the side.

• When the working group decides to help the existing project of one member. Then that member becomes the de-facto leader and the rest become supporters and advisors.

• I have seen groups successfully deliver inward looking projects, meaning projects that benefit the network: for example members co-organize a global summit, develop a new governance policy, co-write a book about the network. But outward looking projects, that would benefit the wider ecosystem, come through very rarely.

What do you think of this? When does collective action actually happen in networks? And what conditions are necessary? I’d love to read your comments!

Thanks for reading & till next time - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to Entangled, exploring the people, insights and practices that help communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

// Thank you to David Dietz for the lovely conversation and inspiration.

Many years ago, Chelsea Robinson, Michel Bachmann and I were dreaming up what a community of community weavers might look like (a project that would become the experimental Community Weavers Guild). As we were hashing out an early prototype and thinking about its purpose, Chelsea invited us to formulate the nascent group’s purpose not as a statement, but as a question.

This new perspective has deeply shaped me. Questions have become an essential part of how I personally think about purpose, both professionally and personally (I for example formulate my yearly intentions as questions). And I have come to realize that questions are a fantastic way to communicate the shared direction of a community.

Question vs statement

For example, with Wasan Network, a global network of community practitioners, we have formulated the shared purpose through the following question: How can we better understand, practice and advance relational approaches to lasting social transformation? Imagine if this were communicated as a statement instead: We come together to better understand, practice and advance relational approaches to lasting social transformation.

The difference is subtle. To me, the question is more humble. It makes explicit that we don’t yet know how to “understand, practice and advance relational approaches”, but that we’re united in our curiosity in and commitment to that question. Having a question at the center also offers flexibility. It’s obviously temporary, emergent, evolving, fleeting. The statement feels heavier, more formal, more official.

And most importantly, the question draws me in. It’s inviting. It energizes me. It will attract the people who resonate with it. And it’s inclusive: it is equally accessible to people who have been part of it for a decade or who are just joining today. A question creates room for many different answers.

Just as with the Wasan example above, many communities have a purpose at their center that has no clear destination. It’s often a bit vague, often a bit tentative, and almost always unclear how we’ll get there. Perfectly expressed as a question.

Community = living the questions together?

Rainer Maria Rilke and his “Letters to a Young Poet” have been a source of inspiration to me since my teenage years, especially his famous section about living into the questions:

“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

While Rilke was talking about personal transformation, I think his encouragement to live into the question equally applies to the collective. At the heart of every community are infinite variations of the same inquiry: What becomes possible when we are more connected? And while a community might have a direction (a purpose, a shared dream, a visionary leader), it can’t know the answers, it has to live into them. Only by being a community - weaving relationships, belonging and care - the possibilities emerge and the answers reveal themselves.

And perhaps, in a world with many shared questions, communities are the perfect medium to live our questions together. Supported by each other we can live into different futures together.

How does this resonate with you? Do you have other examples of groups that have questions at their core? I’d love to hear!

Till next time -

Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to Entangled, exploring the people, insights and practices that help communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

// Credits: A big thank you to Chelsea Robinson for bringing this perspective first into my life. And to my collaborators Erin Dixon, Sita Magnuson, Michel Bachmann for centering “inquiry” in our work with the Community Weaving Project. An earlier version of this post was published on the Together Institute blog.

The other day, Marc Fonteijn from the Service Design Show showed me some of the AI experiments he’s developed for his service design community. I have been rather skeptical about the applications of AI in community. AI chat-bots to activate a forum feel like a taster of a dehumanized dystopia. But when speaking to Marc, I recognized that there is tremendous opportunity for communities to play with this new technology and apply it in meaningful ways.

What if AI helps us make the case for communities and networks?

AI offers a solution to one of the biggest challenges facing communities and networks: demonstrating their true value without turning interactions into transactions. Many of us intuitively understand that communities are valuable, but this value often remains hidden beneath the surface. It exists in the quality and quantity of relationships (from casual connections to deep friendships), peer support, personal and professional growth, and collective knowledge (embedded in calls, sessions, notes, and posts). It's found in successful need-offer matches and emerging collaborations.

While incredibly valuable, these benefits remain largely invisible to outsiders. Crucially, much of this value emerges through chance encounters. You might learn something transformative simply because you attended a particular gathering, joined a specific session, or heard a key comment. Or perhaps someone made a life-changing introduction because they happened to see your request. AI could help make this hidden value more visible and accessible.

The value question is crucial, because it directly links to funding and thereby the group's long-term viability. One avenue to fund communities is through philanthropic investment. While many funders claim to invest in systemic solutions (which communities and networks perfectly embody), most ultimately prefer funding tangible and predictable solutions that achieve clear-cut quarterly KPIs. Another avenue is through membership fees. But the moment the community asks for contributions, members also start considering what tangible, short-term outcomes they get from the group. Both funders and paying members want a clarity that most groups can’t provide. And as a result numerous networks struggle to secure sustainable funding, leading to burnout among their leaders.

What if AI provides a pathway for groups to make their value more visible, accessible and predictable? What if this value becomes less dependent on serendipity? What if this helps funders to make stronger cases that investing into communities and networks is impactful? What if this makes a stronger case for potential members or for members to contribute financially? That’s the opportunity.

Building on this hypothesis, here are five opportunity areas that stand out to me, each deserving further exploration and experimentation:

I - Make community knowledge valuable

Many communities have oooodles of call recordings, notes, chats, Miro boards, photos from flip-charts from past gatherings, and online forums full of people reflecting on the community’s central question. If a community is dedicated to x, there is a great chance that there is huuuge amounts of knowledge, experience and even wisdom about x somewhere in that community. But most of that content is hidden in a dusty corner of the internet. Almost nobody watches old recordings or reads old notes. In a time where nobody has time for anything, those forms of content are simply not user-friendly and therefore not valuable. That’s where AI comes in.

AI can help a community to:

• Capture all the data in one place and make it searchable and interactive.

• It can package that content up in infinitely different ways.

• Some of these ways will turn out to be useful and valuable for the group.

In Marc’s example, this shows up as:

• A GPT that has access to all the community’s content and that you can interact with through an interface within their community, just like you would interact with ChatGPT.

• An automated flow that turns session notes and recordings automatically into short AI-generated podcasts (with automated show notes and thumbnails), which then gets automatically uploaded to popular podcast players like Apple Music, minutes after the session ended. This allows people who weren’t at the sessions to get audio “executive summaries”.

• An AI generated “daily spark” that brings a nugget of practical insight from the archives and shares it automatically in their private discord channel.

This is valuable for several reasons:

• Assuming the group will still have serendipitous encounters of relational learning (through virtual sessions and in-person gatherings), now AI opens up a whole additional universe of asynchronous learning. This allows the content to become valuable for people who weren’t at those sessions, who are not part of the community or who want to come back to that content later.

• For groups that center around learning and peer exchange (such as most Communities of Practice), this allows a group to showcase the value of its collective knowledge to outsiders and make a compelling case for joining or funding the group. For example, if you lead a community focused on immunization logistics and have 7965 pieces of content on the topic, you could enable non-members to interact with your group's collective wisdom through your public-facing website and the intuitive interface of a GPT that seamlessly works across languages and formats. This approach supports peers throughout the industry while serving as a powerful advertisement for membership. After all, while learning from a GPT is useful, nothing compares to the relational learning that happens in the supportive environment of a community.

II - Help a community make latent connections

I see three categories for potential connections in a community: obvious connections, serendipitous connections and non-obvious connections.

Obvious connections are just what they sound like. You work in the same field, have the same passion, live in the same place. You meet because there is a sub-group dedicated to your interest or you pro-actively reach out to someone to exchange notes. Easy to identify, easy to act on.

Serendipitous connections happen by chance. You sit next to each other at a dinner and hit it off. You happen to be in the same Zoom break-out room and have a great 10 min conversation. You bump into each other at a networking event. These encounters can be equally valuable, but they are unpredictable (even though one can design for more serendipity).

Non-obvious connections are all the encounters that could be valuable, but aren’t happening, because you don’t know about them. My sense is that the potential of non-obvious, but valuable connections in most groups is huuuuge. You might unknowingly face a similar challenge. You might unknowingly have faced similar challenges in the past. You might unknowingly have very similar values. You might unknowingly be able to help person x with their request because you know y.

Very often we don’t know that we were supposed to connect with someone until we spent an hour sitting next to them. AI can help with that. It can understand our profiles and pro-actively suggest non-obvious connections. It can matchmake.

Technology has already attempted to do that, either to help with serendipitous connections through randomized introductions, or by using spreadsheets where people describe themselves. These spreadsheets are a lot of work to create, a lot of work to keep up and very limited in use.

Imagine an AI that knows fully who you are, what your challenges, interests and needs are. In Marc’s case, their Spark AI bot combines the private member profile data and their LinkedIn profile data to find relevant matches.

This will quickly bring up valid privacy concerns that will need to be carefully debated. Do we give the AI access to only publicly available information, like LinkedIn profile, blog posts, videos, etc, or are we ok for the AI to read everyone’s emails? Or will this be an opt-in opportunity that some members choose to engage with while others don’t? In Marc’s case, they were - unsurprisingly - very intentional about the process and they co-developed extensive guidelines for how the community wants to engage with AI. This seems key. Using AI in community is not just about the outcomes, but equally about the process of how the community designs it.

III - Better match needs and offers

So much community activity is essentially about search (and why I call communities “human search engines”). People use the relational field of the community to search for relevant answers to their questions. The community - if there is a web of trust - allows for better search results than if you searched publicly. The answers are more contextual. And the answers are more generous: People offer things they wouldn’t offer to a stranger.

However, most of the matching between needs and offers still happens through virtual forums or groups that are organized chronologically. Success depends on whether the person with a relevant offer happens to see a post from someone with a matching need. Effective matchmaking relies on both parties reading these messages at the right time.

Additionally, needs and offers aren't static—yesterday's need might not be relevant today. This is why static approaches like spreadsheets become outdated almost immediately and rarely function beyond an initial burst of connections.

AI can—in theory—understand community members' needs as well as their gifts, assets, offers, and talents. It can then proactively suggest appropriate matches.

Among existing technologies, SuperHive performs well in this area, and we've successfully implemented it across various groups. It makes asking and helping both dynamic and recurring, moving interactions from virtual forums to your inbox. Yet even this system depends on someone actively formulating their need and someone else reading that email within a useful timeframe.

What if AI could understand your needs and continuously, proactively search for relevant matches? What if it helped you recognize your own assets and gifts, then suggested opportunities to help fellow members?

IV - Automate membership processes

Dave Bayless recently pointed out the potential for automation to support community work, especially the sometimes thankless “dirty dishes” of community admin. With automation tools like Make or N8N that incorporate AI, there are now significant opportunities to streamline these processes.

For example, the onboarding process can be greatly simplified: An AI agent can automatically add new members to social networks or WhatsApp groups, update your website's member directory, email upcoming gatherings to new members, and manage yearly membership subscription renewals.

It’s crucial that AI doesn’t replace human interactions, but rather enhances them. Ideally, this means community weavers can focus their energy on meaningful 1:1 calls and creating warm, personal welcomes for new members, while administrative tasks handle themselves in the background. As Engin Ayaz and Melissa Clissold write in this thoughtful reflection on when to incorporate AI automation and when to avoid it: “…let AI handle the repeatable. Let humans hold the irreducible”.

V - Track Key Metrics

Coming back to the original hypothesis, if communities and networks already deliver value but struggle to prove it because much of that value happens in hidden, unexpected ways through 1:1 interactions, AI could help quantify this impact.

• What if we could measure what knowledge exists within our community and how valuable it is for members and beyond?

• What if we could track how many connections form within the community?

• What if we could measure both the quantity and quality of needs matched with offers?

• What if we could quantify seemingly intangible qualities such as trust, care, and generosity?

• What if we could automatically visualize connections?

Some communities currently do this currently. Marc has been surveying his community every 6 months for 4 years, which has given him a profound understanding of the impact they are creating. What if this could be automated going forward?

Together Institute AI Lab: An invitation to experiment

As you probably can tell from the post above, at Together Institute we are really excited to experiment how AI might serve communities in meaningful ways. That’s why we are bringing together some close partners and are putting together an AI Lab. We have a few more spaces open. So if you interested in implementing AI experiments in your community or network and have some budget to invest into the development of simple technology, please reach out (fabian@together-institute.org), we’d love to weave you in.

Till next time, Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to Entangled, celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

Credits: Thank you to Marc Fonteijn for sharing his experiments and giving comments on a draft of this post. And thanks to my colleague Michel Bachmann for edits. Photo by Skyler Ewing

For many groups, one of the biggest struggles is sustained member engagement. It’s easy to get people to show up once or twice, but how do they become long-term active members?

One way to think about long-term engagement is to think about value - what do people get out of it? At Together Institute, we prefer to think about the notion of “energy” - a close cousin of “value”, but one that feels less transactional. Our assumption is simple: People repeatedly engage, if they receive more energy than they put in. This is true in many parts of life, but especially in communities, where people participate and contribute (hopefully) out of their own free will. Unlike at work, there is no contract, no hierarchy, no pay, no external incentives to engage. People will engage if they get energy. In the Community Weaving Framework we visualized that energy as a fire in the middle, a source of warmth, something that attracts us and keeps us coming back. If there is no energy in the middle, there is no community.

So if a thriving community is all about energy, then our role as community weavers is not to create that energy for others (as I need to keep reminding myself], but to sense where potential sources of energy are for our group. Our work - especially in early phases and transition moments - becomes about energy discovery: Where is the energy at? What moments, places, activities and concepts are sources of high energy? Who are sources of high energy? And how can we create simple structures and formats that will help people to tap into that energy regularly?

5 sources of energy

Every group gets its energy from a variety of sources. As repeat “energy detectives”, we keep looking for energy in the following five areas:

I - Possibility / Purpose

Why? What becomes possible when we are together?

At the heart of many communities is a shared dream: the possibility that when we are in closer relationship things become possible that otherwise would not be possible. That dream, that possibility, when clearly articulated, is a huge source of energy. For example, I feel energized to contribute actively to Wasan Network, because its purpose (of making the case for relational approaches to systems change) is closely aligned with my own purpose and I can imagine how as a collective we can have a much bigger impact towards that dream than as a sole individual. By investing energy into Wasan, I automatically invest energy into my life’s purpose.

A way to tap into this energy is to host a conversation about the shared dream. What do we believe will become possible when we are more connected? These conversations naturally come up in the early stages, but can be equally energizing in later stages. Another potential intervention (as with many of the more abstract elements below) can be around clarity. Most groups have a purpose and possibility. But are we clear what it is and can we articulate it in a simple and consistent way where? (Tools like the Minimal Viable Community canvas can help).

II - People

Who? Who is this group for? Who are we?

The type and quality of people are a huge source of energy. Whenever I enter a new group, I ask myself: Are these my people? Are these people I want to be more connected with? Do we share an identity? For example, I’m always eager to connect to fellow long-distance hikers and have seemingly endless energy to talk to them. Being a hiker is such an important part of my identity, because hiking is such a source of joy in my life. So groups with hikers give me energy, because they strengthen my identity, give me a sense of belonging and allow me to live my passion.

A simple way to increase a group’s energy is to mindfully bring in new people. New people, when purpose- and values-aligned, bring in healthy fresh energy.

III - Values / Principles

How? How do we treat each other? What’s important to us? What’s our culture, our tone, our vibe?

The values are deeply connected to the people. They qualify the people. There are hikers who believe that long-distance hiking is about coming into relationship with nature and there are hikers who believe that it’s about covering the distance as quickly as possible. The first ones are my people, while the second ones aren't.

Values are one of the most underestimated and overlooked sources of long-term energy. It’s easy to find people to connect with. It’s hard to find people that truly embody values I feel aligned with. And the embodiment of values becomes the group’s culture, its tone, or its “vibe”. As my colleague Michel Bachmann likes to say, “your vibe attracts your tribe”. For example, when we started Sandbox, we didn’t have much going for ourselves. There were other, more established entrepreneurial networks with bigger budgets and more sophisticated experiences. But what, in my opinion, made the difference then - and still does today - is a strong set of implicit values around kindness, generosity, not-taking-yourself-too-seriously, curiosity. While the group’s purpose wasn’t always clear and the value proposition continued to change, the values stayed steady and were a huge source of continued energy.

IV - Place

Where? Where do we belong? What’s our shared relationship with land?

Feeling connected to the same land, the same neighborhood, having a shared cultural context, feeling a mutual sense of home, these are all huge sources of energy. It’s much easier to be energized by physical proximity than through virtual connection. For example, I feel energized to invest into the relationships with my neighbors because we have a clear local shared context. This is our shared home.

V - Shared Activities & Infrastructure

What? What are we doing together and how does it create value for me? What becomes possible together?

The elements above are powerful, but at times they can feel rather abstract. People also need tangible reasons to get involved and stay involved. A more short-term value. We see the more tangible value falling into four sub-categories, all shaped by their mutuality:

Being together

We get energized by the relationships that form thanks to this community: the care, the friendships, the sense of belonging, the mutual support. This is a huuuuge - and I would argue the most sustainable - source of energy: People keep showing up for people they care about. And the more time they spend together, the more likely they are to show up again. For example, while I feel deeply aligned with Wasan’s purpose, it’s in the end the friendships and the joyful moments we spend together that motivates me to keep showing up.

Learning & Growing together

Communities can be great environments to grow and expand, both personally and professionally. We get energized by learning with and from our peers. And communities can provide us not only with a way to grow, but to do so in a safe, relational environment, allowing for deeper learning and personal transformation. For example, I could learn about communities and networks by simply reading books and blog posts. But the relational environment of Wasan makes learning so much richer. As I learn about people’s perspectives, my own horizon grows, my opinions change, I change. And meanwhile my friendships deepen through our shared conversations.

Doing together

Certain people get antsy when a group is just about the relational, they are eager to do something concrete together. They crave concrete outputs. For them, it’s obvious that they could never do alone what is possible in collaboration. So they are energized to show up and co-create. The myriad of potential outputs from collaborations can be very energizing.

Investing together

Groups create value by investing into shared infrastructure and unlocking benefits of scale. This can take many shapes, from shared software accounts to a library of books to collective physical infrastructure like a shared park. For example, I’m part of a co-working collective called Post Office and while I get energized by the community’s decentralized mission and values, it’s the tangible value of having access to a shared workspace that keeps me coming back.

A spectrum: from abstract to tangible

If you look at the list above, they range from the very abstract to the more tangible and short-term sources of energy. My hypothesis is that healthy groups have a mix of both: they offer something tangible to draw people in and give them a clear experience of “value”, while also being rooted in the longer-term sources of energy.

I have a different mix of energy sources for each group

As I was thinking through examples, I realized that my own energy to show up was made up of a patchwork of different factors, and the mixture was different for each group. And depending on the mix, I would engage more or less long-term. For example:

• Wasan Network: What energizes me are the mission, the people and the friendships we created, the implicit values around kindness / friendship / generosity. I get tangible value from the friendships, but also I learn a lot from the group and I have found collaborators for projects. I have quite a varied “energy portfolio” and therefore I am quite consistently motivated to show up.

• For some years I was part of a community in the US of ambitious change makers, with fabulous retreats organized in unique locations. I got tangible value from meeting interesting people, but I never felt aligned with the group’s values and didn’t really believe in the group’s purpose. As a result my interactions stayed quite transactional and opportunistic.

What are your sources of energy in community? I’d love to hear! Thank you to Michel Bachmann for his valuable edits and additions to this post!

Till next time - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to Entangled, celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

In September 2019, Hinnerk Hansen, Lauren Higgins, Darius Polok, Jane Wei Skillern and I organized a gathering on Wasan Island in Canada, bringing together people who run purpose-driven networks. It was magical — the island, the water, the trees, the sauna, the good food, and, of course, the beautiful people. On the last morning, a few of us met around the breakfast table, energized and curious how we might continue our conversations. We formed a little “hosting team” and began meeting for monthly organizer calls. In January 2020 we started monthly learning sessions, intentionally opening it up for anyone to join the conversations. And just like that, Wasan Network was born.

Initially, the project filled me with such energy and joy. I loved bringing network weavers together to learn and collaborate. And over the years, I organically took on more responsibilities—hosting monthly sessions, experimenting with new formats, organizing in-person gatherings, and helping coordinate behind the scenes. The work felt deeply rewarding and aligned with my purpose. And beautiful friendships started to form.

But gradually, something changed. The vibrant energy of experimentation gave way to a sense of obligation and maintenance. What had started as a joyful side project felt increasingly like a chore. Last September, five years after our first gathering, we convened again for a strategy retreat. During a casual conversation about holiday plans, Eli Malinsky jokingly suggested I might need a break—not just a personal vacation, but a break from Wasan itself. That night, lying awake in bed, I realized Eli was right: The project I had poured my heart into was draining my energy. I was burning out.

So I stepped back. For the past 11 months, I have done little Wasan-related (with one notable exception: the Wasan Huddles, which were a source of great inspiration and part of a paid project). The time away gave me space to recharge and reflect. At first, I was surprised: I come across so many community leaders who burn out. Through my work with Together Institute I have supported many of them. Yet, despite being very aware of the risk, I seemingly found myself walking the same path. How had this happened? And how could I avoid falling into the same trap again in the future?

Why did I almost burn out?

1. As the community matures, the work changes

When we started out, everything felt new, exciting and spontaneous. Over time, however, we developed structures and routines. For the community itself, this rhythm and consistency is healthy, but for me as community weaver it often meant less joyful experimentation and more mundane upkeep.

Without noticing, my role and energy shifted from a playful collaborator to an operator. The wise community weaver Alanna Irving once compared community leadership to kitchen work: every household has dirty dishes that need washing, but it’s rarely fun or energizing work. As the community matured, the dirty dishes started to pile up in my sink—maintaining databases, updating websites, figuring out data privacy. At some point, these tasks consumed more energy than the creative, relational activities that initially drew me in.

2. Lonely leadership syndrome

I naturally believe in the collaborative dimension of community work. Together, anything is possible. Yet, over the years I started to doubt the reliability of volunteer co-creators. It’s natural that people get excited during meetings and overcommit (and then underdeliver) on projects. I think this is normal. Yet this created a wrong belief in me that if I didn’t do the work, nobody else would. Despite promoting co-creation and decentralization, I found myself repeatedly stepping in to fill gaps.

This perspective was unhealthy. First off, it simply wasn’t true: Many members - especially my colleagues from the Hosting Team (Claire Wathen, Darius Polok, Eli Malinsky, Ian Bird, Jane Wei Skillern, Sandra Ortiz Diaz, Sonja Miokovic, Sue Snider, Tim Draimin & Vinzenz Himmighofen and many others) - were putting in a loooot of work along the way. Yet, in my head a narrative grew that became a self-fulfilling prophecy, reinforcing my sense of isolation and deepening my fatigue.

3. Invisible leadership syndrome

I’ve been deeply inspired by Jane Wei Skillern's network leadership principles—such as "Promote others, not yourself" and "Build constellations, not stars". And I’m convinced that humble community leadership is essential to creating a culture of care and generosity. In my case this meant that I often downplayed my contributions and emphasized collective efforts over individual credit. Plus, much community work naturally happens behind the scenes: I spent countless hours in one-on-one conversations, onboarding members, coaching new volunteers, and quietly managing logistics.

Yet this intention of humility over time contributed to a growing sense of invisibility and added to feelings of exhaustion and even resentment. It made me wonder: Was this a spiritual weakness of mine - essentially an expression of my ego - needing to feel more seen and appreciated? Or was it a healthy need of community leadership to sustain energy over time?

4. Money, money, money

I believe resourcing community leadership is crucial for long-term sustainability and the clearest path to avoid burn out. And yet, many communities - like Wasan - operate in a semi-paid or mostly-unpaid grey zone. And it’s in this grey zone, with some, but often not enough, money, where it can make things better and often worse. For example:

• Once money entered the equation, something in my mindset shifted. I was volunteering the first two years, then got paid for parts of my time for two years. After that our budget became much smaller and I transitioned back to (mostly) volunteer work. That shift from being paid, even partially, back to volunteering was hard. Would it have been easier if I had never been paid?

• So much about money and community has to do with expectations. Several times informal promises or anticipated funding did not materialize as expected. Budgets took much longer to come through or were spent differently than discussed. This is pretty natural in any project environment. But for me, unmet expectations became a source of frustration and exhaustion. And at some point I stopped counting on future budget plans, because I worried about being further disappointed.

• When we start paying people for their community work, we want to put a fair value on it. But finding a shared understanding of the fair value of community work is complicated. For example: How do you quantify the value of invisible tasks such as emotional labor, relationship-building, and community care? Is this weaving a type of “leadership” or is it junior admin work? And how do you take into account global variations in pay? What seems like a small token of appreciation to someone in the Bay Area might feel disproportionately generous to someone in Warsaw.

• It’s really, really hard to make the financial case for yourself: Talking about compensation is never easy, but within a friendship-based, largely volunteer-driven context, it is even more tricky. I found it incredibly confusing and vulnerable to continuously make the case why I should be paid for my work. And - influenced by the sense of humble community leadership mentioned above - I often voted in budget conversations against my own interests, trying to put the collective first.

• At the very heart of the money conversation is a question of self-worth. Do I believe I actually deserve to be paid for this work? Is my work truly valuable? Is community work truly valuable? Was my work valuable enough to justify payment in a context where others volunteered? These doubts made advocating for myself even harder.

What am I learning from this all?

And how might I avoid burn-out in the future? I can’t say I have figured this out, but I know burn-out affects many, many community weavers. So here are some emergent take-aways. I’d love to hear your own reflections and learnings in the comments.

1. The health of community leadership is a collective responsibility

I thought about lots of things that I would want to do differently next time: To pay attention to the warning signs of burn out (like bitterness, impatience, exhaustion); to set clearer boundaries for myself (how much work am I willing to do for free that it still feels healthy?); to express my needs clearly. As this list was becoming longer and longer, my friend and colleague Sandra Ortiz Diaz asked me: What if the onus of doing this wouldn’t be on you alone, but carried collectively within the community?

This was a big mindset shift. Sandra helped me realize that for communities to truly thrive, the wellbeing of community leadership can not be an individual task. It’s impossible to stay healthy by yourself. It takes all of us.

2. Community leadership is about creating conditions and invitations for others to step into leadership.

I’m starting to accept that true community leadership isn’t about heroically carrying everything; it’s about continuously creating conditions for others to step up. And I’m also learning to accept that many shared dreams and aspirations in a community simply never will get done, and that’s ok. The work of community leadership isn’t to force projects into action, but to constantly note where the energy is at and help direct it.

3. Community leadership is not sustainable without reciprocity

This experience made me much more aware of the necessity for “reciprocity”, the idea that in the long-term the giving and receiving has to be balanced, especially for the people who give a lot. I have known - rationally - about the need for reciprocity (and it became a key part of the Community Weaving Framework), but too often I have ignored it in practice.

While money is a powerful source of energy, in many community contexts it’s simply not realistic to pay community weavers. So what else is possible? A culture of gratitude: a regular “thank you” goes a long way. How can we make this part of community culture? Visibility: Feeling seen is part of feeling appreciated. What are healthy ways to give visibility to community leaders? Can we uplift all the work they are doing and share it regularly with the whole group? (And whose job is that?)

4. If you have limited budget, invest it in a dishwasher

Nobody loves doing dirty dishes. So if there is only a small budget, getting those paid for should be prioritized.

5. Spend budget on community weavers before experiences

I’m curious how this one will resonate. Many groups find it easier to spend money on experiences than on community weavers, because experiences provide a tangible output, while the work (and value) of community weavers is often invisible. They create relational infrastructure. So if we invest into experiences over the weaving, we might end up with beautiful short-term moments, but no long-term future.

A huge thank you

This was, of course, never a solo journey and I’m deeply grateful for all the people that have co-created this group. In the beginning, it was the beautiful people of Wasan that got me excited. And it was the beautiful people of Wasan who supported me through it all and help me heal. A big thank you to all the members of the Wasan Hosting Team (past, present and future): Claire Wathen, Darius Polok, Eli Malinsky, Ian Bird, Jane Wei Skillern, Sandra Ortiz Diaz, Sonja Miokovic, Sue Snider, Tim Draimin & Vinzenz Himmighofen. And a special thanks to Christine Lai, Eli Malinsky, Michel Bachmann, Sandra Ortiz Diaz & Sonja Miokovic for reviewing a draft version of this post.

I would love to hear your reflections on this. How does this resonate with your own experience? And what does a path towards healthier community leadership look like for you?

Till next time - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to the third edition of Entangled, celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

Credits: Photo by Ondrej Supitar

"Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space." - Orson Scott Card

It was probably in 2007 when I started to think of myself as a "community builder". Together with friends we started a group that would become Sandbox, a global community of change makers in their twenties. Back then, we didn't know anything about community, we just made it up as we went along. I remember googling "community building" and finding it hard to relate to the answers. Community seemed to mean many different things in many different contexts, and most resources on the internet were about hyperlocal community organizing. Clearly, most of the world was thinking about community building in different ways than we were. But what did it mean to us? As we were leading, hosting and nurturing the community for many years, we started to see patterns: questions we kept coming back to, a mental image of how we made sense of what "community” was. Could we find a structure that would capture what it meant to build a community?

My cofounder Nico Luchsinger and I started to write down our observations and published a first version in 2013 in the MIT Innovation journal. And, inspired by positive feedback, we thought: what if - inspired by the Business Model Canvas - we create an open-source framework for community builders. With the help of Sascha Mombartz this became the Community Canvas, a framework we published in 2017.

I was amazed by how well the framework was received. It was downloaded thousands of times, volunteers translated into 14 languages and to this day I meet someone every other week who is working with it. Naturally, we also have been working with the framework and applied it to many of the groups we've been supporting. I found it really helpful to sharpen my thinking and help groups identify and answer fundamental questions.

Yet, as my own experience with communities deepened, I started to feel that something was off. As if the Canvas was promising more than it could keep. As if the Canvas was showing the world in an artificially orderly way, while the reality was more messy. It all started to click when someone pointed out that with “Canvas” we were using a misleading metaphor. The Canvas looked like an engineering blueprint and implied that a community can be planned, organized and put together according to those instructions. But could community be built?

I was reminded of this shift in perspective in a recent post by Indy Johar:

The 20th-century engineering playbook was written for a world that behaved—at least on the surface—like a giant, predictable machine. Our project Gantt charts lined up as neatly as assembly lines; optimisation meant wringing one more percentage point of efficiency out of a single function. But the twenty-first century is already making a mockery of that worldview. Climate feedback loops, AI-accelerated discovery, and poly-crises that bleed across jurisdictions reveal a landscape that is fluid, entangled, and radically contingent.

I came to realize that the same applies for working with community. While I was initially drawn to the clarity and simplicity of an engineering mindset, my growing experience was teaching me that life was way more complex. That communities can't be built like a machine or a building. That, in reality, they are a living, breathing organism. A web of human relationships: “Fluid, entangled and radically contingent”.

And I realized that literal and visual metaphors had consequences. For example:

• A simple blueprint promises simplicity: just fill in the boxes and you’re done!

• A mechanical metaphor invites simplistic mechanical solutions. If you build community, it seems obvious to invest into infrastructure (such as digital tools) first.

• Every metaphor comes with implicit principles. For example, “building” is all about the initial planning and creation of a structure, and then it is built (while the real work in community lies in the ongoing nurturing of a constantly changing system).

Looking for nature-centric metaphors

All of this became clear in deep conversations with Erin Dixon, Sita Magnuson, Michel Bachmann, Alfredo Carlo and Linh Trinh, as we set out — with the support of many community peers — to develop the next iteration of the Community Canvas. If we wanted to provide a framework that was grounded in the complex reality of life, we needed to find a different metaphor, one that reflected the often mysterious, unknowable, chaotic, imprecise dimensions of community.

Instead of community as a machine, we felt drawn to the metaphors of nature: gardens, rainforests, flocks of birds, mycelium. And over time we kept coming back to idea of communities as webs of relationships. How everything is entangled with everything. And to the related act of weaving: of creating intentional connections across the web. Inspired by ancient traditions of weaving and by peers that had been using that terms before us - such as the work of June Holley with Network Weaving, the team at The Weaving Lab, Weave: the Social Fabric Project by Aspen Institute and likely others - we landed on Community Weaving.

The new model has 5 elements, each of them grounded in a pattern or element from nature, that each invites us to ask the same question from a different angle: How do we weave healthy communities?

The new framework is intentionally less precise, less predictive, but hopefully more intuitive. It’s not linear. There is not one simple starting and no end point, no solution. Instead, it’s an invitation to be in conversation with each other. To pay attention to context. And to pick and choose what resonates and leave out the rest.

How does this all resonate with you and what metaphors have you found helpful to navigate the complexity of communities and networks? I’d love to hear your reflections, send me a note!

Till next time - Fab

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to the second edition of Entangled, celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

Top image source: Peter Robbins on Unsplash

Dear friends,

Welcome to the first edition of Entangled, celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you (more below).

The world is rapidly changing and so many things I took for granted even just a few weeks ago are falling apart. To me, this moment feels deeply confusing, overwhelming and scary at times. And, as Meg Wheatley writes, it’s also very isolating: “Fear of the uncertainty that we face, when perceived as a threat, can cause us to retreat from one another, from values that held us together, from ideas and practices that encouraged inclusion, from faith in leaders, from belief in basic human goodness”.

But, as the work of Rebecca Solnit in documenting the aftermath of disaster shows, times of disruption can also provide an opening to connect more deeply with each other: “When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brothers’ keepers. [...] And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear, and loss.” [Source]

What if moments like these provide a choice for us to either fall apart or fall together?

I loved this playful provocation by Elise Granata: “In the dark times, will there also be gathering? Yes, there will be gathering about the dark times” (inspired by Bertolt Brecht). She reminds us that these moments bring us into presence, they offer catharsis and they create “a shared reality for a group of people to now operate in together. When we know how others feel in a group, when we all name the thing we are all thinking about (or should be), we co-create the very landscape around us”.

I believe there is an urgent opportunity here for all of us who bring people together in communities, networks, ecosystems, fellowships, etc. We have an opportunity to create, within our respective environments, deeply relational containers to jointly process what’s happening and to have spaces to fall together. One possibility, of course, is to start new groups and initiatives. Another possibility is to work with the many existing groups (of various purposes) and introduce formats that help people navigate the times we’re in.

Below are three formats from friends and other practitioners. What other formats do you think could help us fall together versus apart? I’d love to hear from you: Send me a short message and I’ll compile the list and share it in one of the next editions.

Thanks for all you do, now more than ever.

Fab

Format ideas for communities to fall together, not apart

Small peer groups

I believe intentional peer groups of 5-7 people can be a powerful way to support each other through these times. Microsolidarity’s crewing page lists many different approaches and here is a detailed description by Johnson Hsieh on how to set up a crew.

Circles

I’m a big fan of The Circle Way, which provides a simple but intentional process to host circles of deep listening and conversation. They also developed a guide for hosting Virtual Grief Circles.

Stories, music, art

I love what my friend Valerie Kaur is doing in the US with her Revolutionary Love Tour: hosting gatherings with artists telling stories of how their ancestors survived seemingly apocalyptic times and creating a celebration dedicated to revolutionary love. This is a moment for sharing stories of courage and strength.

About Entangled

// Entangled: Welcome to the first edition of Entangled, celebrating the people, insights and practices that help purpose-driven communities & networks thrive. If you care about bringing people together, this might be for you.

// Why are you receiving this? You likely read one of my posts on the Together Institute blog and signed up there. You can of course unsubscribe at any time (at bottom of this message).

// Hello, I’m Fabian, co-founder of the Together Institute where we work with purpose-driven communities, networks and their leaders to help them thrive.

Image source: Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash

Subscribe now