This proposal is part of the weekly Giving America Series. Model it on the roadmap alongside all the other proposals at contributism.org/giving-america.
A couple of weeks ago, I got an unexpected text from a friend. It was an invitation to their going away party; they were moving on from Oakland and they wanted to celebrate a bit and grieve a bit. And they wanted their friends to be there. Would I be able to make it?
The text was unexpected because I didn’t know they were going away — I had just moved to Oakland; I had met them at a party a couple of months before. It was also unexpected because I didn’t think I was someone they would have invited to their going away party. I had only run into them three times. I liked them, I thought we had connected a bit, but I didn’t know we were friends.
I think friendship happens in this way more often than we think — we don’t really know we’re friends until we are invited.
Proposal: Invite your friends to things
This week’s proposal is simple — in a contributist society, we extend personal invites. This is to say, we don’t just blast out bulk invites using partiful, post an instagram story for our followers, or make a facebook event and tag our friends. We ask them to come.
Before I explain why, I want to be clear about something — planning or hosting an event at all, regardless of how you invite your friends, is an enormously contributist act. When you bring people together, you give them the space to form and strengthen bonds. You are giving your time and talent to your community, and enabling them to give to each other. In my opinion, those who gather are the truest community leaders.
So I’m not criticizing those who use bulk-invitation tools to make party planning easier. I’m simply asking all gatherers (and prospective gatherers) to take a minute to consider what is lost when you do, and what is gained when you take an extra few moments per person to send a personal invite.
When my friend invited me to their going away party, a few things happened:
I realized that we were friends. As the amount of time we spend with others is sharply declining (the amount of time we spend with friends has dropped by half since 2010), a lot of would-be friendships these days exist in a kind of will-they/won’t-they acquaintance purgatory. You may know a lot of people, but are they your friends? Sometimes it’s hard to even know what that would look like.
By inviting me, my friend showed me what it looks like. Turning acquaintances into friends is easier than it seems, but it takes intentionality. For those of us who shy away from directness, sending a personal invitation is kind of like a low-stakes version of DTR (defining the relationship). If I had only received a bulk-invite to the event on partiful, I would still be wondering what they thought of me. The personal invitation functions as a statement of friendship.
I felt included in a community. I’ll be honest — when I arrived at the party, I felt a little bit special. But I also knew I wasn’t alone. I knew that everyone else who arrived probably also got the personal invite; they also probably felt special. But it didn’t matter that I wasn’t unique. The feeling wasn’t about being unique, it was about being accepted. I felt like part of an inner circle, a community. We were not just party attendees. We were all friends of a friend.
I felt a responsibility to show up. Maybe most importantly, the personal invitation made me feel like my presence was important to somebody. “Needed” is too strong of a word, but I did feel wanted. Simply showing up for someone else is one of the most basic forms of giving, so when you tell someone that you want them to show up for you (voluntarily), you provide them with an opportunity to give. This is why we use the term “the right to give” as contributists — to be a contributist is to believe that everybody should have the opportunity to be wanted, that this is an essential human right.
I don’t mean to exaggerate the importance of this one invitation. All of these things happened in small measures; they were of the sort of background feelings that we usually don’t even articulate. But I’m articulating them here because, as the acceleration of techno-capitalism chips away at our social ties, it is important for us to be able to speak clearly about what we are losing, and to understand what we can do to bring it back.
The personal invitation works because it is one of the purest examples of FARE giving. It’s Free on both ends: you didn’t have to invite them, and they’re not required to come. It’s Active: it takes direct time, effort, and intention to extend the invitation. It’s Relational: the invitation is itself a bid for connection and an expression of care, and it invites the reciprocity of showing up. And it’s Effective: people are much more likely to show up to your event when they know that you want them there.
Speaking of this: a friend recently told me that she was tired of showing up to events and not knowing if anyone really wanted her there. She said that she’s trying something new — she’s going to step back a bit socially. She said that, for now, she’s only going to go to events that she’s invited to. This, as much as the going away party, was what inspired this proposal. Let’s make a world where she, and everyone else, feels wanted by their friends.
Q&A
Do I have to take the time to think of a personalized message to send to each individual?
No, it’s enough to simply make it clear that you cared enough about them personally that you chose to take the time to reach out. A personalized message certainly helps, but the point is simply that the individual should know that you wanted them specifically to be there.
But what’s the difference between a bulk message and sending individual invites? If it’s the same message, doesn’t the bulk message save a lot of time?
The difference is exactly the effort that the bulk message saves. One of the things that makes any act of giving meaningful is the amount of time, effort, or attention that the giver puts into it. The more time, effort, or attention that you give to an individual invite, the better an act of friendship it becomes.
Are you saying I shouldn’t use partiful?
Not at all! Please do use partiful, or whatever hot new alternative you like. It makes managing parties so much easier, as anyone who has ever tried to change the date or location of an informal event can understand. What I’m saying is that you should use partiful to plan the event, but you should send the invite link to people personally, instead of (or in addition to!) just selecting a bunch of mutuals and sending a bulk invite.
Also, please don't limit your parties to those you can send personal invites to! See the personal invite as a cherry on top of what you've already been doing, not as a new floor.
Does it have to be a text message? What about a call? A paperless post? A brief in-person conversation?
Any of the above! All that matters is that it’s clear that you’ve reached out personally, because that’s what signals that you care.
This is exhausting! Another tedious thing to do on top of all the other things I have to do to plan an event!
Please don’t feel like you have to do this. By hosting an event, you are already doing enough. But if you have the energy, think of the personal invite as a low-effort, high-reward way to make others feel valued, and to build stronger community.