Resurrecting the Club Directory

Early on in the film Join or Die, a brief montage flashes on the screen showing something that used to be far more common in communities across the United States—Club Directories.

The film centers on associational life, and the fact that its decline over the past several decades has been a major contributor to many of the biggest issues we face as a society today.

So to think it used to be perfectly normal for a city to publish and distribute a pamphlet letting people know about the groups that they can join in town is both inspiring and maddening to me.

Why can't we just start doing that again?

There are certainly plenty of things that aren't in our control—why not bring back at least this simple thing? What's stopping us—me?—from creating and distributing a directory like this now?

It turns out, the only thing I found in my way was inertia.

(Watch the excellent trailer for Join or Die here and the full film on Netflix here.)

This direction opens up more possibilities moving forward—could we make it more robust? What did we miss? Where can we distribute these? Can we work with local property managers to get them in the mailboxes of new residents?

The power of such a simple project is part of why bringing back Club Directories is a priority in the Democracy Policy Network's City Membership Policy Kit—it paves the way for more good things to start happening—both top-down and bottom-up.

Creating the directory

Having already hosted a couple New to Town Meetups—another action recommended in the policy kit—I already had compiled a Google Doc with every group, club, organization, space, mailing list, and resource I could find.

So when the opportunity came for handing out something physical, in the form of a table at an upcoming Earth Day festival, my friends at the City of Norwalk, Connecticut were more than happy to build on my directory by designing and printing a test run of physical brochures.

Tip: I bet there are good people in your city's government who want to get stuff done. If you find them and come up with ways to collaborate with them, things can start moving faster than you might expect. Look out for these folks.

I was amazed just how fast this all came together. No red tape, no RFP, no bureaucracy. They used some existing materials and assets they already had ready, and made it happen.

(Shoutout to Sabrina Godeski, AICP and Anna Breault! 🙌)

Sharing the directory at the Earth Day Festival

Coming right back from a long trip, I couldn't actually lay my hands on the brochure until the day of the event—but I was so happy to see just how great they looked on the first try.

It was a rainy day, and getting my first ever festival table set up was an adventure, but fortunately I had help (and some heroics from my wife Christina Bacigalupo) and was able to get the brochure into the hands of lots of folks passing through.

While the rain kept a fair number of people home, a lot of important figures in the city were still in attendance—meaning I got to put the brochure in the hands of our current mayor, some of our major upcoming mayoral candidates, city council members, and even the City Clerk.

When I showed the directory to the City Clerk, he asked me to stop by City Hall with more copies so he could distribute them further. He also suggested we get them into the brochure racks at the local highway rest stops—I hadn't thought of that!

He knew the person I had to go to—they restock those racks regularly, so I just have to get them into the right hands.

We should have the fresh order of brochures in-hand soon, so stay tuned for more photos.

Does your city have a Club Directory?

Do you wish it did?

If you started making one, who would support you?

(I would!)