Where to begin?
Back in June 2010 a smart gay guy decided that Gaydar and the other ‘social’ gay sites were just not providing the purely friendly social side, particulary for the ‘no longer young’ amongst us, and not totally relying on the scene.
So he searched and he found Meetup.com, the website and phone app that allows social groups to arrange and publicise events, and created within it the Leeds Gay Men Group.
For a couple of years he developed the group, then handed over to Tim who spent seven years further developing, growing and maintaining this group, funding it without asking for contributions and doing all the work with a little help from some friends.
In 2018 he handed over the running of the group to another member, who ran it for a short while, but in October/November 2018 unfortunately abandoned the group without asking anyone to take over.
So that’s where I come in – November saw me pay for the necessary ‘Unlimited Membership’ for six months, so we can attempt to get the group back on track – the introduction of VAT on online businesses has since hiked the price, so making it even more important that we share the cost amongst the membership – along with the responsibility of coming up with ideas for events.
We need to charge £2.00 per year annual dues, and our membership to stay well above 100 so that the group is self funding.
If we can manage this, I have already created a LeedsGayMen email account, together with the Google drive storage, associated PayPal account, facebook profile, from which the closed facebook group hangs, a new Twitter account – so that the whole thing can be managed online and be passed on with the ownership of the Meetup group.
If we fail to keep the interest and gain the financial as well as social input from them we need, we will need to look for a fee free platform, such as running it through the facebook group page (or a new one) – so please guys, get involved and be prepared to stump up £2 a year.
We’ve raised enough from a generous section of our membership to continue until November 2018 – we will need to fundraise again (virtual meetup already available at the end of October) and MOST IMPORTANTLY we need more meetups and to attract better attendance – please offer yourself as host for an event, it can mean as little as being available to greet and make welcome new attendees and report no-shows, as far as you want to take it, if you want Event Organiser rights you can then arrange and edit the meetup in all details – but whatever level you want to take it to, you can have as much handholding and assistance as you wish.
Yorkshire Gay and Bisexual Men's Group 