Looking for Minnesota's success story :)

[Corbeau]

Hello, MN furs, I hope y’all are well!

This may be a HUGE ask, but I hope  y’all can help (I’m from Texas, “y’all” is a fine word, thank you 🙂

I’m working on building a local meetup to help grow our community, be inviting to families, and make a hub to help stabalize and connect Austin, Texas’s various furry communities and subcommunities. As a part of this, I’m going to be hosting a discussion on community-building at our upcoming gamer/fantasy convention, “Havencon.” I’ve got ideas from years in the fandom and a fair bit of nonprofit work, but I’d very much like to get some tips for growing a strong furry community from Minnesota, if y’all are up to sharing! This doesn’t need to be a “deep dive,” it’s only a short panel-style discussion, but my partner and I were really impressed with Minnesota’s furry community and organization when we came up for Furry Migration in 2016. Thank you so much!

Best wishes,
Corbeau

[Ski Sharp]

Hello Corbeau,

Glad that you had fun up at Furry Migration last year, and hope you will be able to make it again.

First big thing is although MNFurs is a charity this is not important for the initial setup of a fur group. In my honest opinion, there are several key points to making a successful large fur group, which is be comunity focused, inviting, friendly, consistent, know your limits and also don’t be afraid to keep troublemakers at Bay.

With MNFurs, the group did not start up to make a fur con, but instead grew up organically from the Constancy of the meets. People have come to know the schedule and are able to plan there weekends months in advance. Keeping the events at the same public place is also keen. But inorder to do this you need to make the rules of the place known so your group doesn’t get a bad rap. Like for instance the Perkins (an upper Midwest Denny’s like restaurant) meets most people know that there’s is no outside food & beverage allowed and that people should at least buy something since we get the space “for free”. Or for things like picnics or meets at community facilities, having a suggested donation in the beginning, but also things they can and can’t bring to cut down on drama. Not following this ends up with establishment or manicipality to no longer allow you to come back, which hurts the idea of being consistent.

The next part is be community focused. This was a huge question in our group when I joined. With the founding of the board (charity) and the begining of the founding of the con, the big concern was that the board would only care about the con. This lead to ensure we still have the meets and events that we use to have. And at these events you want to make new people who show up feel welcomed and inviting.

And lastly I would say know your group’s limits. Years before MNFurs took on furry migration, there where other hotel events to show us what worked what didn’t and prepared us to make a con. This came years after the group was established. That’s our big key is we have a cohisive group long before we had a con. This helped to make the group not about the con, bit more then a con community but a general fur community that happens to own a fur con.

 

Sorry if this is a bit hard to follow, I am trying to write this on my cell phone over lunch break.

If you want any more information or clarity I would be happy to answer or direct you to someone who could answer it .

Sincerely

Ski Sharp

[Corbeau]

So, to summarize 🙂
– Community first (convention afterward!)
– Meets should be regular and predictable
– Rules should be clear, and rulebreakers handled appropriately.
– Don’t overreach until you’re ready 🙂

We have a number of cons in Texas, so…I don’t think there’s any need to reinvent that particular wheel! Do you do anything to find or welcome new people, or have a way to handle families?

 

thanks so much!!

[Drake M.]

Ski brought up some good points, thank you for sharing!

Corbeau wrote:

Do you do anything to find or welcome new people, or have a way to handle families?

Yes we do!  Aside from our forums where people can make their own thread to introduce themselves, we also host a Meet & Greet at are larger fur meets held here in Roseville.  At our Meet & Greet we let new community members introduce themselves and they can share what brought them to MNFurs.  We have handouts with information about us as well as goals/mission & department contact information.

* * * * * * * * * *

We also have regular events like our regional meets at Perkins here in the cities as well as other common events.  These events include community bowling, fursuit romps, community mini-golf, & many more.  We have another community member who has been doing some hiking events at state parks.  I can go into more specifics if necessary!

To touch briefly on this, we have a board of directors and staff with various departments.  This includes Events (I run this department), Volunteers, Web/IT, Treasurer, Quartermaster, & convention.  Each department has their list of tasks and other responsibilities and play a key role in making our community a success.

Do you have anymore questions?  🙂

If you would like to converse further about anything more specific on these topics, feel free to e-mail –> [email protected]

~ Drake M.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 12 months ago by Drake M..

T H €  B | Z   F [] X

RETIRING JUNE 2024

MNFurs Events Department Co-Head - Events are the main driving factors of the organization.  Have an event you want brought to life?  Let us know!

MNFurs Photography Department Staff - Photography and capturing moments is what we do at our events for our community.  Let's chat about your photography needs!

Midwinter Frolic Staff ~ Photography - Midwinter Frolic is a fun winter camping event down at Whitewater State Park.  Attending and have some photography ideas?  Let's chat sometime!

Furry Migration Staff ~ Photography - A will be a wandering staff photographer at FM this year.  Want a photo or two or more?  I'll be around!

MNFurs ~ 501(c3) Non-Profit Organization

[Grunge]

I had to laugh when I thought of ways to make things more friendly for families. Drake had a good answer about promoting good events, but we also shoot down ideas, even sorta popular ones if it makes us less family friendly. It happens, and when an idea is put out there which is no good for our community and it’s reputation, man you can hear the tires screeching as we bring that idea to a halt. We actually have to be the bad guy and say it’s a bad idea because there’s an easy pathway to underage drinking or if the activity involves gambling or if more than a few reasonable people think a sexual assault is likely to take place (No really, I’m not making that up.) So yeah, be open, be encouraging, be engaging, and toe the line when you need to.

[Aerak]

I think Ski’s post nailed most of the points.

Regular meet ups became the cornerstone of our community. And they evolved organically. It started out with just a dozen people. Fast forward years later and we started organizing picnics that drew hundreds of people.

As events got bigger and as the community began wanting more, it became necisarry to establish a non profit corporation to handle all of the fiduciary responsibilities.

A big asset to us was our willingness to work with other, non-furry geek communities. As we were becoming more organized, being able to borrow volunteers from other organizations and work with subject matter experts was invaluable.

The biggest piece of advise I can give is to never stop scouting for talent. Eventually you can spot it from a mile away, and you want to be sure to nurture it. You’ll either end up with someone your organization can help, or someone who can help your organization. Sometimes both.

[Procyon]

I think another big part of the success of this group is central organization acting as a promoter of Furry as an art form and even lifestyle.  Admittedly,  this is no different than being a “trekker”, “gamer geek” or “Otaku” before us.    Yes, we are all here to have fun.  And, to be fair, most attendees do not care beyond, “Do I get to wear my fursuit/tell you all about my Fursona”.  That is the joy of youth and being a fan of something.

But there is also a core of incoming and retired volunteers (rotating volunteers, not just 1 or 2 figureheads) who see that there is a balancing act between responsibilities to 2 key principles.  And this balancing act is not always seen is some of the other regional Furry fandoms.

1: Trying to make sure the fiduciary issues of being a non profit is met in terms of transparency, safety, legal, economic and self governance is maintained within acceptable limits.   These are hard, take time, take even more patience, and need to constantly be open to take on new leadership.

2: Conversely, it needs to be an advocate for the art.  Furry does deal with an art form.  One were the raw vibrancy of life displayed before it.  I notice some other regional furry groups avoid issues of gender, sexuality, history, culture and other societal “entanglements” any good art form is likely to touch on.  Guess what, that’s what makes it art.  Not dealing with it means it will eventually get away from any semblance of control.  Understanding and respecting that context is key, especially in the balancing act with the first principle.  It is too easy to become too permissive.  But it is also easy to be too aggressive with the ban hammer for anything that may cause controversy.

The secret of this group is it seems to know how to keep those 2 in check.

 

[Corbeau]

Re Grunge: Interesting. So there’s a “gatekeeper” element at work here. From my conversations when I was in Minnesota it sounds like the nonprofit manages most of the large public stuff. If there was some event that was a little more edgy and adult (say, the local indie theater plays “Fritz the Cat” and all the college kids want to go make a group trip to see it, or Bob the Ferret is at the drag club Friday night and wants to put out an invite) would that simply be something that happens outside of the official channels? Does the more “after dark” stuff simply get organized outside of the nonprofit’s umbrella?

[Corbeau]

A lot of what I’ve been working on has been intended to be parent-facing, and I have the real blessing of the assistance of the International Anthropomorphic Research Project’s organizer, Nuka, looking over my shoulder. He’s been invaluable in touching up my language and helping me find a balance on “PC” and “honesty”. I try not to dodge the issue of sexuality, because it’s there, we usually use language along the lines of “Adult content: it’s there, we’re a young and sex-positive group with a lot of artists and a lot of college-age males, so there’ll be sexual content. It’s not a primary focus of the fandom, though it does tend to be the main focus of the media focusing on the fandom. Monitor your kid’s internet access if that’s a concern!”

Here’s my work-in-progress “For Parents” page if it’s at all useful:

Furry Information for Parents

Much of the reason I’m working on building a core in the Austin furry community is to make a gateway for parents, kids, and high-school age folks that would be interested in the fandom but would have a hard time getting integrated at the house-party and restaurant meetups. I’m hoping that by building up a core event with a strong “all-ages” policy, I can make a hub that folks can attend, but with enough gentle community policing that we can wrangle the club bois and occasional chronically inappropriate folks without directly excluding them from the overall community.

[Mouring]

Corbeau wrote:

Re Grunge: Interesting. So there’s a “gatekeeper” element at work here.

There is to a degree. Keep in mind this gatekeeping is primarily on the “If you want your message to go out MNFurs social media channels.” And you can see those limitations on the bottom of: https://www.mnfurs.org/about/event-submissions/

Anyone is allowed to post on the forum stating they have an event. As long as it doesn’t any break state or federal laws or it doesn’t contain any unreasonable amount of personal information.

However, for an event to be pushed out to MNFurs social media it must be an open event. Yes, there may be age restrictions (e.g. “Hi, I want to have a wine tasting event… 21+ only.”), but no “Everyone but…” type events will be accepted.  As nothing is worse than wanting to go to an event that has been announced as “a public event” only to find out it is only for X type of furry or only Y subgroup within the local community.

A lot of small scale stuff (when requested) gets on the calendar and announced. The Pho meets in St Paul is a good example of a very small (10 people at max) event.  Or the Halloween Valley Fair event which is 10 – 20 people.  As well as the fundraisers at Petco for non-profits which is 5 or 6 people.  So yes small events when submitted in a timely manor do get announced.

However, what ends up being most of the gatekeeping device in that case is the MNFurs event and web staff is limited, and as a result they need time to schedule announcements on social media as well as time to react. So sending in an event a week before may result it not being announced due to not having time to process it.

As for true “after dark” stuff, most of that is invite only which fails the restriction test. I’ve never known of a public “key party” (to steal an older phrase). As there is a level of comfort between all people that is required for such events, and as long as someone in the group is willing to vouch for the person then it puts people at ease.

 

BTW, keep in mind with reading all of this that the community around MNFurs has been established for a lot longer than the Steering Group (the pre-cursor to MNFurs) and MNFurs.  The major MNFurs picnic events have been around for a VERY VERY long time.  As a result, the community in an unofficial way has been self-policed and self-managed for a very long time.  The formation of the Steering Group (just after Snowpocalypse) was just an other attempt to formalize it more which lead to the creation of MNFurs as part of our community wanted to have a convention as well as better integrate with other non-profits (i.e. Como Zoo).

Mind you if you speak to the right people in the community MNFurs is (if you ignore the steering group it grew from) the third attempt at a furry organization.   So even success stories have rocky starts. =)

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