Dear reader,

Welcome to Stage 1: Preparation. Everything starts with planning and preparation. So does our City Community. Maybe you are interested in of what our community actually consists of? Then you should look here.

You will find a checklist of all the things you should do in preparation at the end of this course in Before you go (on). If you want to see it now, maybe because you want to make a project plan, what we strongly recommend, then you should click on the right.

Okay. If you saw the checklist, or if you do not want to see it before you read the whole course you can click on the button in the right and go straight to

Research

You should start the City Community only if you can answer the following questions with Yes.

• Is no other City Community near you, so that a city community is really needed? You can see the existing City Communities soon on a page we made. :D

• Is a university in this city? Otherwhise it will not be possible to start the community.

• Do you know which subject you want to support? I would propose that you take a subject you learned or you had contact with during your time at Serlo. Later it will be possible to take some more subjects

• Do you have the time and the capacity to do this? It needs time and effort.

Mission Statement

Your mission statement should provide answers to these three questions:

A. What is the main goal of your community/ project

To know what the mission statement should entail you should know, why City Communities are that important. I wrote a little article about that. It would be really gentle if you read the two paragraphs

The main goal should entail:

• What you want to do (city community)

• Where you want to do this

• With which subject you begin

• and why this community is important

A possible answer could be:

"Buildup of a new Serlo City Community in Cologne, to support math and other Subject Communities and provide a shelter and home for all serlo members in Cologne and thus help to provide free education for all."

B. Which skills are required?

Your city community need people, which have

• Expertise (to add subject content)

  • knowledge in the relevant subject

  • good educational skills

• Communication and marketing skills (to communicate your city community properly)

• Organizational skills (to organize all events and meetings and so on)

And various other skills that you think could be useful.

C. How to measure success?

You should use the following parameters to measure your success:

• How many people in your area have heard from Serlo?

• How many people are in the facebook group?

• How many participants do you have at your events? Do they come regularly?

• How many people work in the week at the Serlo Place?

• Is their feedback positive? (Do you want to use a satisfaction barometer?)

• How much does your city community create?

• How many local supporters does your city community have?

You should ask the questions regularly, maybe each month, and record them. This will help you

• to measure your effectiveness. How effective is your marketing. How effective is your acquisition and so on.

• to identify need for improvement.

If you think there are more parameters to measure success feel free to use them and send your ideas to us!

If you want to promote your new City Community you should have a City Community page.

This Page should entail:

• A Picture under the headline (950x360)

• A short info, what Serlo is

• A short info what kind of people you are looking for

• A short info, what these people can do (e.g. work on math/ translate)

• The goal from your Mission statement

• A Link to the Facebook Group of your city community (right after you founded it)

• Time and Place of the weekly meetings (after you begin to have regular meetings)

• The next event(s)

• job postings

• A link to the New Here Page of three subjects

Examples

Here is a sample page of the city of Bayreuth in Germany.

Generally speaking, the City Page should be created in the native language of the corresponding area or country - for demonstrating purposes, the page for Bayreuth was created in English.

Let 5 people review the page

After you did that you can go on to make some flyers.

A Flyer is a really good idea if you want to go to the University and get the first teammembers. There are two kinds of flyers:

Serlo Flyer + City Inlay

You ask your countryboard to send you some Serlo - flyer. You should create an inlay on your own.

The Flyer should provide the following information:

• Where does the community meet?

• When do they meet?

• How is it possible to contact you?

• What kind of people are you searching for? (e.g. biology and math students)

Excitement Flyers

You have the picture on the front, a catchy sentence at the back and a big QR-Code to the City-C-Page.

You should acquire at least two people to help you building up the community. Obviously, it is good if you find people that are experts in some subjects and want to be editors.

But really important is in the beginning that you find people who have skills useful to organize and build up a city community.

This people should be

• good at public relations and can build up a good presence in social media

• good at organizing events

• good contacts to find editors

• good at other leadership skills

You do not need people that combine everything. You do not need one student for each skill, but you should have all the skills in your team.

Find the contributors

At first you have to find the people or let them find you. The latter is easier.

1. You should make a notice for the billboard and for the monitors in your university or school.

2. You should use flyers.

3. You could make a facebook post in the university group or in the facebook group of the university course, which would best suit the main goal of your community.

Don't forget to give them an opportunity to contact you. You could give them your phone number or your email address.

The first meeting

When they call or write you you should propose them to meet in a café. There you should try to get to know them and talk with them about Serlo.

Important agendums for the first meeting:

1. get to know each other

• Small talk

• Did you both come here on a good way, with a good feeling?

• Where do they come from at the moment? (From a lecture e.g.)

• Was the lecture good?

• You should make a little introduction of who you are and ask them the same

• Who are you?

• What are you studying?

• What are your hobbies?

• What do you do at Serlo, what is your mission at the moment

2. Ask where and how they found Serlo, what they already know, like and wether they want to hear more about Serlo

3. Ask them what their strengths are and how they want to contribute

Some hints

1. When they want to know more about Serlo you should answer the following questions:

• What is Serlo?

• What do we want to achieve with Serlo? (Mission)

• Where do we stand with Serlo? Why is Serlo so cool?

• How did Serlo start? (the monastery story)

1. Try to detect if they really want to contribute or if they are sceptical.

2. It is not a job interview!!!!

The E-Mail after the first meeting

After you met them, you should write them an E-Mail and thank them for the talk. If you already made an appointment you should write date and time of the new meeting. If the person was more skeptical you should write, that you look forward to receive feedback, wether he want to join or not.

The second meeting

In the second meeting you should bring all the people together who are willing to contribute and helpful. In short you should collect all the good people. This meeting should be in a cozy enviroment too.

The Agenda of the second meeting should be:

1. Small talk

• Did everybody come here on a good way, with a good feeling?

• Where do they come from at the moment? (From a lecture e.g.)

• Was it (the lecture) good?

2. Make an Agenda

• Tell them which big points are standing on your agenda (all the next points are the agenda

• Ask them, what they additionally want to ask, which questions they have

3. Introducing

• You should make a little introduction who you are and ask them the same.

  • Who are you?

  • What are you studying?

  • What are your hobbies?

  • How did you come to Serlo? How did you find Serlo.

4. How should the future work look like?

• It is really important, that you all get a detailed picture of your future cooperation. You should use the growth course to decide upon the different tasks and activities.

• What is the first goal you want to work on? (A Serlo weekend?, 20 Students, …)

• Maybe work on a tentative schedule for your meetings. Do you want to meet regularly?

• When will you give them an introduction to the editor?

• Make a tentative project plan

• Maybe you should allocate people together for some of the first tasks

• Maybe you find some other goals or assignments with the subject communities - City Communities exist to support them

5. Set up communication channels

• You will find infos on make structures

• give them a Serlo account

• show them how to use the editor

• add them to a facebook group Serlo {name of your city}

You found a team and builded up some structures with them? Good, then let's move on :)

Before you begin to plan the Kick-Off and the Start events you should make sure that you accomplished all the goals in this course.

You did research?

You wrote your mission statement?

• You identified the main goal of your community

• You identified the skills you need in your community

• You determined, how you want to measure success

You built the city page

• Is everything on the page that should be at the page?

• Did 2-3 people review the page?

You made flyers

• Is everything that should be on the flyer on the flyer?

• Did 2-3 people review the flyer?

• Do you have enough flyers?

You found the initiation team

• You distributed flyers and other messages

• You had the first meetings

• You wrote the E-Mail

• You made the second meeting

You made structures

• You determined a community shedule

• You found a place where you regularly meet

• You set up the internal communication channels

  • Facebook Group

  • Asana

  • E-Mail Distributor

You did it everything?

Great, then you just finished preparation. In the next chapters our main target is to expand the city community and to establish a vibrant living community.