Editing Building Relationships (section)

== House Meetings ==
The house meeting is a tactic to establish or grow relationships in organizing, amongst small to medium sized groups of people. House meetings bring people together to connect, share stories, and learn your campaign strategy. The goal is for participants to agree to take action on your campaign. Some of them will commit to holding their own house meetings or activating their networks, thus allowing your campaign to keep growing.

In a house meeting, the host invites a network of their acquaintances to attend. An organizer will often work with a host by coaching them through inviting their networks to the meeting and then lead the meeting.

House meetings do not have to take place in houses! While hosting a house meeting in a home is totally appropriate, they could also take place in cafes, community centres, worksites, and other community spaces. It’s the format, not the location that matters!

=== What does a house meeting look like? ===
A house meeting provides an opportunity for each participant to share how they are connected to the campaign and share values and stories with the other participants. The organizer will give the attendees context about the campaign, model story sharing, and invite the attendees to share their story as well. The organizer closes the meeting using the Public Narrative framework to weave their Story of Self with those of the other attendees to make a Story of Us, and finish with a Story of Now, with a specific commitment through a hard ask.

In other words, each house meeting has four key pieces:

'''Purpose''' – Explain why you invited everyone to a house meeting, give a brief overview of the campaign and explain what you’ll be doing – mostly sharing stories and hearing from others. Make sure to be up front that at the end you’ll be asking everyone to get more involved.

'''Exploration''' – Most of the house meeting is devoted to facilitating the house meeting attendees getting to know each other and having a chance to express themselves. Go around the room and ask each person to share why they care about the campaign issue, and why it was important to them to come to the house meeting. Depending on the size of the group you may want to split them into smaller groups for this portion of the meeting. The idea here is to help each person express why this is important, and build connection with the other people at the house meeting, through the values your campaign is based on.

'''Commitment''' – After you’ve heard from each person, it’s time for you, the organizer, to ask for a commitment. Start by answering the question of why this campaign issue is important to you, yourself. Draw connections to what you’ve heard already, pointing out how your values or experiences are similar to those in the room with you. Finally communicate how the campaign strategy will act on those values by stating the campaign’s goals and strategy. Close by sharing details on what they can do to support the campaign. End with a hard ask.

'''Exchange''' – Ideally those attending say yes to your hard ask! At this point you may want to exchange what resources the people in the room have to help everyone fulfill their commitments. Depending on what they’ve committed to they may need a space to meet again, people with specific skills, a way to get around, etc. Set next steps for how you or others will support them in fulfilling the commitment.