Community Organizers NYC. Propel’s WhatsApp groupchat for organizers. (Image by Anthony Rose of Seed Legals)
A year ago we started a room for people who run rooms.
Twenty people. No landing page, no launch, no budget. The rule was narrow on purpose: everybody in it had to actually organise something. Events, communities, cohorts, dinner series, meetups. Organisers have a particular set of problems. The venue falls through, the no-show rate is forty percent, the sponsor goes quiet, you finish the night with two hundred business cards and no way to reach anyone again. Those problems are almost never solved by talking to the room. They are solved by talking to the other people who built one.
It is 130 people now. We have never advertised it once.
What it actually is
Community Organizers NYC is a working group, not an audience. If you host events in New York, you are in a room with the people who host the other events. That means you stop competing for the same Tuesday and start telling each other which venues answer the phone, which sponsors actually pay, and which formats fill.
Concretely, in a normal week: somebody needs a venue and somebody else has one sitting empty. Somebody needs a panellist and three people know the right one. Somebody has a room booked and open co-host slots. A fortnight ago a member asked the room for event hosts at 7:47 in the evening and had a New York date confirmed by 9:01. Seventy-four minutes, because the person with the free space happened to be awake.
None of that is remarkable on its own. What is remarkable is that it is routine, and that it costs nobody anything.
The part worth paying attention to
Almost every one of those 130 people was added by somebody already inside.
That is a slower way to grow and a better one, and it is worth being precise about why. When you advertise a community you get people who liked the description. When a member adds someone, you get a person that member is willing to be associated with. They are vouching quietly, and they carry the cost if it goes badly. That single filter did more for the room than any application form we could have written.
It also means nobody in there is lurking to be sold to. Everyone arrived through a person, so everyone already knows at least one other person. That is the whole difference between a group chat that hums and one that is silent by week three.
What we are building next
A cohort for event hosts. Not another chat. A proper cohort, running together, sharing what works instead of each of us rediscovering the same lessons about door lists and no-show rates on our own. If you have run events and hit the same wall four times, this is the thing that gets you past it.
A home to run them in. We have partnered with Lahuta, and our events run there now. Which means our organizers start with a venue and a page instead of the hardest question.
Co-hosts get paid. Anybody can co-host, everybody works off the same link, and the payout is handled. Bring people to a room you did not book and you still earn from it. No side deals, no chasing anyone for your share. We are running a whole session on exactly this mechanic: One Page, One Payout, Tuesday 29 September at 6pm.
And the marketing and CRM sit underneath it. The thing we have been building all year: your guest list, your sends and your follow-up in one place instead of a Luma export, a spreadsheet, and hope. If you have ever run an event and then lost every single person who came to it, you already know why that matters more than it sounds.
Three rooms coming up
All on our Lahuta page:
One Page, One Payout · Tuesday 29 September, 6pm. How the co-host payout works, end to end.
Webinar-for-Hire: See the Room Before You Book It · Thursday 1 October, 4pm, online and approval-only. We walk through the productised webinar we run for founders: an approval-gated registration form, a pre-brief so you know who is in the room before you open your mouth, a moderated forty-five minutes with one clear ask, and a same-day follow-up that turns names into introductions. The one we ran on 31 July produced four traceable introduction paths in a week, including one from a guest who could not make it, read the follow-up, and had a discovery call the next day. Flat fee $3,500, plus 15% on any introduction that closes within twelve months. Request a spot
The Family Office Dinner · Thursday 8 October, 6pm.
The wider network
Community Organizers NYC is one room of several. The Founder Network chat went from 50 people to 250 during Tech Week last year and has not slowed since. In the last fortnight alone it carried around thirty events, several product launches, a handful of paid gigs, and a steady run of people asking for introductions and getting them.
Across every channel the community is past a thousand. None of it was advertised either.
How to get in
We are opening Community Organizers NYC to new members, and looking specifically for people who run things. Event hosts, community builders, cohort leads, dinner series people, anyone who has ever had to fill a room and fight the no-show rate.
Two steps, in this order.
Make an account on Propel first. It takes two minutes and it is how we know who is walking in. That is the entire verification layer, and it is the reason these rooms are still worth being in at 130 and at 250. No account, no link.
propel.earth as it stands today. The cards on the right are live: real people, real asks, real offers.
Then tell us which room. Organisers, founders, or both. We send the invite.
Already on the platform? Reply to this email with the word organiser and I will send the link myself.
One last thought
The thing I did not expect from this year is how little of it was mine. I started the room and added the first twenty people. Everything after that happened because members did it without being asked: a hundred and ten more people, dozens of events, the partnerships, the cohort.
That is the only kind of growth I trust now.
Best,
Stephen
IF YOU MISSED THE LAST FEW
Seventy-four minutes. Somebody asked a room for an event host at 7:47 and had a New York date by 9:01.
She told me where to stand. The woman who ran the models at my first show now produces her own.
What eight people said they needed, and what I did about it. Eight real asks, each with one word that gets you the introduction.
 | THE PRIVATE NETWORK Three introductions a month, to someone who can pay you, hire you, or move your company forward. Made by hand, from what you told me on your card. Free entry to every room I run. $200 a month, and the first 25 members hold that rate for as long as they stay. |
Not sure yet? Take fifteen minutes with me and tell me what you need. If I do not think I can route it, I will say so rather than take the money.
KNOW SOMEONE WHO SHOULD BE IN HERE
Forward this to them, or send them the front door, where the card, the map and the Private Network all sit one click apart.