200+ Minimum Viable Community Ideas (MVC)

We’re almost midway through our Rosieland Community Building cohort and we thought the results of a collaboration activity would be useful and fun to share.

This week we are learning and sharing all things related to building a Minimum Viable Community (MVC).

What is a Minimum Viable Community?

An MVC, or a Minimum Viable Community is the seed to your community movement. Not all seeds will flourish and grow, but as a community builder you need to try things to see what works.  It's a mindset to start small and experiment, to commit to learning about your people, what it is they need, love or talk about.

It is about avoiding the lure of big community, tools and processes. To instead focus on building relationships and understanding between one another. To break down the walls. To do people research.

Starting small is perhaps the only authentic way of doing this. And authenticity matters if you want people to open up with the truth.

Starting small means you start to build trust. A community without trust is one that will likely not survive.

Starting small means you start to really learn about what people want. This means you can build learnings in to building your community.

Starting small means you can be mindful of the culture you are creating, through your own behaviour and of those that you invite in.

Starting small is less risky. It gives you the freedom to experiment and trial things out and just being ok with the whatever happens.

Starting small means you focus on the outcomes and learnings rather than the metrics.

No matter how big your community vision is, it should start with some sort of small experimental gathering. It can be a newsletter, a meet up, a Twitter hashtag or heck even a collaborative Google Doc!

A place for you to test ideas, validate visions, and believe in one another

Minimum Viable Communities are magical little places — personally, a favorite part of a Minimum Viable Community is the fact that you’re not only planting the roots of your vision, but also coming together to trust, experiment, and believe in one another.

While it can feel awkward, weird, or even silly at first – these little seeds allow you to start not only validate a vision, but also build those formative bonds with one another.

Now, while you may have a plan for what happens and comes together — feel free to play around and go off script. Test the waters, don’t be afraid to have some fun – that’s how relationships are formed.

MVCs are great for focusing on people and ideas rather than the tools. The internet is amazing. The tech is mindblowing. But when building community — humanity and creativity is essential.

Keep it simple, ( + silly! )

It can feel like a lot at first when getting a community going.  And let’s be honest – you will misstep, and you will fail at things! Events won’t have the attendance you want or go according to plan — heck even in our own little MVC experiment today, the tools failed and we struggled even turning on our mics at first.

But it’s part of the adventure— doing something and learn what works for both you and your community. 💥

The collaborative activity we hosted

We decided to try a new tool and gathered on Butter, there were 9 of us in total. We may have discovered the amazing sound effect tools at the end and we may have ended up having laughing fits. I can neither confirm nor deny this event occurred.

Honestly, we appreciated not using Zoom and trying to be a bit more creative with how we gather.

Below is a pretty much unedited version of what we produced. As a team we spent roughly 5 minutes brain dumping ideas for MVCs into a Google Doc. Giving space to around 30 ideas for each one.

Quick collaboration sessions over Google Docs can be so fun! Seeing people type and this being backed up with voice and video can be a super fun experience. It also takes away from the pressure and awkwardness of ‘talking’.

It definitely helped us connect as a community. ❤️

And here is the raw list…

Community: unschooling

1. Sharing best practices
2. Watch talks about unschooling and do a discussion around it
3. Listen to podcasts about unschooling and do a twitter thread of learnings
4. Create a shared page of things that Unschoolers SHOULDN’T DO
5. Group  activity (bring ya kids)
6. Twitter Chat
7. Play together on Roblox
8. Unschooler parent therapy group
9. Find unschooler around you
10. Start regular discussions on a Reddit
11. Host a Twitter Space
12. Create a Twitter hashtag.
13. Shared Miro of unschooling activities
14. Share victories and doubts
15. Pair learning from more experienced unschooler ❤️
16. Clubhouse!!
17. Playbook of unschooler resources - repository
18. Free coaching sessions
19. Start a whatsapp group
20. Minecraft sessions
21. Creating a digital garden where they can find things.
22. Rent an unschooler
23. Unschooler tea session
24. Unschooler POTLUCKS every month!
25. Unschooler coffee session
26. Unschooler wine session
27. .Create a lesson together from a textbook etc..
28. .Write a book together with unschoolers!
29. Audio discussions via Capiche
30. Unschooler kids playing together

Community: Blockchain Women

1. Create a curriculum of learning blockchain concepts together
2. Build something together as we learn
3. Women leading blockchain sessions
4. (Mini) tutorials
5. IG Video Reels? :)
6. Host Meetups
7. Interviews of women in Blockchain (video, podcasts)
8. DIRECTORY! Create a page where you can find and list all women in Blockchain
9. INTRO INTO BLOCKCHAIN SESSION
10. Create a Twitter list of Blockchain women
11. Post questions about Blockchain using a hashtag
12. Series of icebreaker sessions (every other week, same people!)
13. Tea Time - have tea and share their disputable teas on controversial topics in blockchain
14. Questions & Answers page - Discourse
15. Invite 100 potential women  on landing page - to learn about blockchain and see how much you convert (so after you can go talk to experts)
16. Create a wiki about 0-100 in blockchain technology.
17. Skillshare Club
18. 5-min presentation parties
19. Clubhouse panel discussion
20. Credibility sessions where women support each other on their careers
21. Being a women in tech industry session
22. Create a series of NFTs together that explain what NFTs are
23. Do something on BitClout
24. What are the needs - What you can give page (Every people share their needs and gives)
25. Start a newsletter
26. Monthly challenge as it relates to learning a blockchain topic
27. Blockchain + [Something else] parties (wine, coffee, fashion, environment-y stuff???)

Community: UX Designers

1. Tools library
2. Create a knowledge base
3. Run AMAs with other, (more experienced?) designers
4. Create images to educate
5. Highlight other designers images on a platform of your choice
6. [Day] UX Hack - encourage others to share a UX Hack that they use
7. Random stranger shout out
8. Curating designer work
9. Showcase your work - Feedbacks (love this! Live feedback sessions!)
10. Fail library of research and what has been tested and tried
11. Share best practices as templates in a giant Figma board (only members get access!)
12. Challenges every month where they can work on a case together
13. Demo Day!!!!
14. I did this looking for feedback sessions
15. Quiet working sessions
16. Talent shows - share what you built recently
17. Get designers to design something in a Google Doc 🤣
18. Landing page feedback, designer feedback
19. Create a UX page together!
20. Create a mentorship program
21. Create a buddy system program
22. Create an IG where members can post their work
23. Twitter discussion on a cool UX topic
24. Book club
25. Take a page and investigate it (Bad or Good UX - Decide together)
26. Offer portfolio workshops for junior designers
27. Have design Challenge
28. Office Hours with experts?
29. Career page
30. Peer support groups (pair people up week over week)

Community: Music Fans

1. New album listening parties (in an audio space!)
2. Virtual Cafe meetups - everyone shares one song to listen to; added to the cafe playlist
3. Have a a page with one song with a thread section on it (upvote / downvte)
4. People sharing their playlists and discuss on it
5. Shared playlists
6. Social music listening?
7. Music pairing - Send me a music and I will introduce somebody that likes this music as well, then you chat
8. Sharing hums
9. Live Jam sessions
10. Random.Groups of 10 people that are fan of the same music style
11. Big shared resource with links to Playlist and accompanying inspo/stories around them
12. Partnerships with Indie Artists
13. Spotify playlist as a discussion point
14. Create a fun activity game related to music
15. Weekly twitter discussion where members share a new song they found in the last week
16. Vibe with your tribe gigs
17. Song Exploder podcast listening party
18. Q&A sessions with song writers, musicians, producers
19. New music radar every week where community pick the songs
20. Share interesting stories behind songs (+1)(+1)
21. Virtual meetup where ppl cook food + NO video, JUST listen to everyone’s favorite songs together
22. Have an artist come and speak at the one of the meetups about their journey into the music industry
23. A poetry day about music
24. Make cupcakes together that represent your fave types of music
25. Dress-up party where you dress up as your favorite artist and talk about which fave song you like and why
26. Make t-shirts together about your favorite music!!
27. Individual tweets about a song to encourage discussion
28. Questions about songs. E.g. How does x song make you feel?
29. Music Genre Battles (It can be a bit messy 🙊)
30. Creating a 24H record on youtube where people add their music to the next
31. People sing together on musically
32. Create virtual sonar sessions? An artist show up and fans meet and gather in this new virtual tool
33. Wine and vibe music sessions
34. TikTok videos and music
35. Vote a new music
36. dance-meme
37. Bracket challenge by genre
38. Music X Dinner (Which music is suitable for which kind of dinner)
39. Music X Dress (Choosing dress for right music)

Community: Mindfulness creators/contributors

1. Mindfulness creators who blog list, expand this for specific niches
2. Half day conference with different creators
3. Best practices
4. Sharing tools (What kind of tools/technologies you are using)
5. Run meetups
6. Slack community
7. Hike outside during the weekends + tea where someone presents what they’ve learned about mindfulness
8. Mindfulness Monday - where you do a Live interview someone about how they got into mindfulness and share it with everyone else
9. Mindfulness News - curate a list of recent findings about mindfulness
10. Facebook groups
11. Join ppl in small (support) groups
12. Daily 5 min meditation - followed by 1 icebreaker (short daily sessions?)
13. Twitter threads highlighting people in the mindfulness space
14. Partner with medito - free app for meditation
15. Newsletter interviewing people
16. Special sessions
17. Training for trainers (+1)
18. IG Live series, different prompt every day, gather stories and retell them on IG
19. Offer a space for creators to share their routines / trainings and vote on the best
20. Local spring wellness session in the park?
21. Sessions where people sharing their special methods
22. Share experiences using different apps
23. Creating “Impact of the meditation” blog together
24. Run fundraisers for raising mental health awareness
25. Accountability buddies
26. Raise funds or resources for a cause together
27. People joining other people’s session as a guest instructor
28. Identify gaps of mindfulness creators and fill the space with lists or resources
29. Ask creators to create a daily video message to share on your “feed”
30. Monthly themed ‘expo’ on a specific theme/topic (bring both sides together to jam)
31. Choosing the right music/dress for mindfulness

Community: Community Builders making an impact

1. Directory (airtable)of social impact initiatives in town / region/ country etc..
2. Free and open forum - Discourse
3. Sharing best practices
4. Interviews social impact entrepreneurs
5. A library of playbook for social impact by industry - Like open source
6. Propose to match volunteers with social impact companies
7. Gather all the worries and questions of actual leaders and create a newsletter around it where others can answers
8. Run collab working sessions (like we are here) to come up with ideas how to make more impact
9. Do live sessions on youtube/facebookOffer weekly mentoring/coaching sessions
10. Lists of ways to create a social impact
11. Create a map of people doing things in different parts of the world.
12. Create a Twitter list of people
13. Write a Tweet about each person on said Twitter list
14. Interview people on Twitter
15. Host an AMA
16. Set a social impact goal, ideate how you can get there in 30 days as a group (how can they involve their communities to help meet it!)
17. Hashtag following specific trends
18. Create a reward mechanism for work done and highlight the work/impact
19. Shared resource: A big list of organizations to support, give to (approved by our community)
20. Bi-weekly accountability meetups
21. Bring people whose life has changed due to the community
22. Twitter Space conversations about the impact each member is trying to make
23. Run social impact hackathons
24. Organize social impact challenges
25. Themed 30 day challenges
26. Monthly gratitude challenge - where every member creates a hand-written letter to someone in Community building space that they appreciate.
27. Create a list of resources of all the community builders that are categorized by purpose (env, sustainability, feminism, etc.
28. Create an email chain of stories that people are actioning
29. Community Social Impact toolkit - Create something other community builders can use to give back Hopeful stories, not sad ones!
30. Create a fun community quilt of IG Stories where you share where you are making an impact in
31. Share habits that people can adopt on Twitter to create social impact.
32. Create the ultimate directory of social impact communities
33. C Corp? (Like B Corp) This group creates a set of requirements and gives communities their stamp of approval if requirements are met

Community: Spreadsheet people who want to learn to code

1. Weekly assignments and code reviews
2. Share screenshots of formulas or spreadsheets
3. Share neat excel shortcuts
4. Have a Miro board with some steps by steps
5. To learn it, create a challenge adventure
6. Automate-the-boring-stuff-challenges
7. Build something together!
8. Build a spreadsheet of all of your learnings with everyone
9. Pull in spreadsheet experts to share their journey into spreadsheets
10. One off discussion about innovative spreadsheets
11. Bi-weekly story-time to share our most impactful creation with spreadsheets
12. Build a new kind of spreadsheet together?!
13. Share worst spreadsheet experiences
14. Make spreadsheets not suck LOL
15. Depending on your level you receive specific assignments to master your spreadsheet skills
16. Create Spreadsheet TikTok
17. Spreadsheet conference (held within the spreadsheet during a timeframe)
18. The spreadsheet newsletter (I don’t know what it is?)
19. Wall of shame of spreadsheet or Wall of proudness (then people vote on it)
20. Shared spreadsheet templates (only members have access)
21. People who learn code with spreadsheet share their experiences
22. Build a Spreadsheet Ninja course
23. Tutorials that show amazing things that people can say woah!
24. Spreadsheet boardgames :D +1
25. Build a spreadsheet game!!
26. Make Spreadsheet Great Again Memes
27. Give and Take weekly Spreadsheet (one side drop what you have to share with the group, on the other side what you need, let members help each other. Update weekly/monthly?)
28. Build a community on a spreadsheet
29. Build Rosieland on a spreadsheet
30. Twitch live session where people build spreadsheet on the go
31. Create a Google Spreadsheet Party