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Choose a location |
Location! Location! Location!
Finding a venue is your first goal. Most cities have free or low-cost venues available for community events.
Some example venues:
- cafes or coffee shops
- co-working spaces
- office space that’s available after-hours
Organizer’s handbook: venue spaces page.
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Choose a meeting time |
When will you hold your event? Day? Nights? Weekends?
Most organizers choose to hold their events in the evening after work.
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Selecting your topic and format |
Successful meetups feature a variety of formats, but these are the most popular:
- Case study presentation or panel of experts talking about a nonprofit tech topic
- Tool-focused event (ie. “5 online tools for measuring social media success”)
- Crowdsourcing Change/group consultations
Topics will depend on the needs of your local community and the speakers you can find, but these are perennial hits:
- Social media for nonprofits
- Introduction to email newsletters
- Online fundraising and crowdfunding
Organizer’s handbook: formats & topics; speakers.
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Promote your event |
NetSquared local organizers get free access to meetup.com, a powerful event management and promotion tool.
We also provide promotional email templates, promotion of your events via NetSquared.org, and social media support.
Organizer’s handbook: growing your community; using meetup; email messaging.
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Documenting your event |
Once your event is over it’s time to share the awesome-ness with the world!
- Ask the audience to tag all tweets with a hashtag (we use #net2 and most cities use something like #net2CITY NAME OR STATE)
- Take photographs and add them to our Flickr group.
- Blog the event and post it to NetSquared.org
Organizer’s handbook: event follow-up
More tips
The organizers handbook will help you find a co-organizer, solicit sponsorships, expand your audience; NetSquared logos; NetSquared slide decks; and more.
Questions? Please email net2@techsoup.org or ask on the google group.