Gina Wright

Our Future on Meetup

We have had a long relationship with Meetup. Over the years, we’ve used it to build community and manage our trips. It’s been a great tool. And, it will continue to be. Here’s how we’ll work with Meetup.com starting on May 30.

1. We are not leaving the platform. While we will create and manage all trips on the Outdoor Afro App, we will share our invites to our Meetup groups. 

• • We will no longer create trips on Meetup or manage registrations on Meetup. 
  • We will link to the trip on the App and request that participants RSVP on the Outdoor Afro App. 

See examples below. They show users using links to Eventbrite in the same way we will use links to our App. Note: Though this technically violates T&Cs, there are many examples like this. We will follow suit. 

2. We are not leaving participants behind. We’ve taken multiple steps to determine how many of the 80K followers across our groups are active and real. The first was to weed out incomplete and duplicate records and really old accounts. That got us to 71K. We began using e-waivers in January 2024 and have just over 5K records–the number of people who registered for trips during the 16 months since we began using e-waivers. We offered a giveaway as another way to ascertain how many members were active/real. Approximately 5K responded. Our hypothesis: Most of the member IDs/records are no longer active or no longer engaged. And still, we are not leaving Meetup.

3. Meetup will simply play a new role in our community development/management ecosystem. 

1. • We will use Meetup to share invitations created within our app to Meetup members–just as we should be doing with our Facebook groups. 
   • We will use Meetup to promote our App to that community. Outdoor Afro’s Marketing team will post app promotions to all of Outdoor Afro’s Meetup groups with language that includes…To join a trip, you must RSVP on Outdoor Afro’s Free App.

4. It is time to own our own platform and relationships with online communities. We live in an age where people find their information from multiple sources–and where many of those sources have made it acceptable to disrespect Black people. Just as we have in our journey to date, we will continue to captain our own ship. The Outdoor Afro App enables this and brings something new to the lifestyle and fitness app ecosystem–an app for Black people who love nature, for connecting Black nature experts, nature lovers, and nature nerds across the US. 

1. • We are now moving full steam ahead with promoting the App. We believe it is our future. We are sharing it in our newsletters. We will share it in the post-trip surveys that participants complete. We will email and, where allowed, text participants to ask them to join us on the App. 
   • We ask that you share it with all of the participants with whom you engage across all social media platforms–and with others in your personal social media, community, and professional networks. 

You have been critical to Outdoor Afro’s success to date, please stick with us. We are updating the App weekly in response to your valuable feedback and in accordance with our product roadmap designed to serve 47M Black people–or at least the nature lovers among us.

by Gina Wright

Outdoor Afro App: A Natural Moment of Change Management

Once again we find ourselves in the throes of change—within Outdoor Afro and in our country. At Outdoor Afro, we are driving change in order to get closer to achieving our mission. As you know, our mission is inspiring and connecting Black leaders in nature. And we mean ALL Black leaders and every nature setting. To accomplish our mission, we’ve built the Volunteer Leader Program which you so ably execute and innovate daily in your communities; the Making Waves Program which enabled us to remove barriers to enjoying water and waterways for Black children and their families; and now, the Outdoor Afro App, which will enable us to reach all 47M Black people (well beyond what we can reach with our 128 volunteers and staff).

Our journey has taken us from a single blog to 70+ social media pages and 200,000 followers across all of our accounts. We have the most volunteers in the most markets that we’ve had in our history. We are offering the most diverse set of activities we’ve offered in our history. Yet, we are reaching a small fraction of the 47M Black people who live in America. And that’s at a time when what Outdoor Afro offers as a Black community—and to a Black community—has never been more needed and more valuable. We inspire and connect Black leaders in nature by providing community, expertise, and opportunity to safely and joyously explore whatever interests them in nature. At this time in our country, this is medicine, therapy, wellness, and peace.

It is also rebellion in the opinion of some and revolution for others. It is also the perfect time to own our platform—to create a space where we can continue to be beautifully, peacefully, intentionally Black and connected in nature. Our Outdoor Afro App is our strategic bet on how we can reach and serve every Black person and community, how we can provide community and expertise even where we don’t currently have volunteers, and how we can avail Black people of the resources we’ve cultivated as an organization (free/discounted gear, access to venues, training and certifications, knowledge exchange, etc.).

To make this bet pay off for us and the communities we serve, we need you. We need you to continue to do the amazing trip planning and leadership, to continue to nurture and grow the community, and to share what you’ve learned...on the Outdoor Afro App.

We understand that this is a change—an important change that we as a staff and you as Volunteer Leaders must navigate together. To that end, here are the major curves and milestones on the road to change.

by Gina Wright

Post OALT25 App Update

• Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.outdoorafro.app&pcampaignid=web_share

• Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/outdoor-afro/id6743444433

by Gina Wright