Our incredible Blaze Trails network is growing so quickly! We have parents across the country wanting to sign up as Organisers and gather people in their community for lovely rambles together.
Until now, we’ve organised our all our meet-ups via Facebook, and more recently a wonderful events platform call More Human.
But we’ve realised that hosting our groups on Facebook isn’t sustainable in the long-term because:
Increasing numbers of people don’t have a Facebook account, which means they currently can’t join our groups and come on walks.
The way the Facebook algorithm works means that event invites and notifications don’t always show up consistently, so our members sometimes don’t know there’s a walk coming up.
Since late 2021 we’ve been doing lots of research into alternative options for hosting our community online - we’ve done some serious geeking out!
When looking at new options, our members and Organisers have told us that these things are important and useful to them:
signing up with their email addresses to free private spaces where local groups can gather and share information freely and safely
finding their local group (info, next events) easily and not have to trawl through what could soon be hundreds of groups across the country to get to theirs
quickly seeing when the next walks are and signing up
sharing photos of the walks they've been on (for example, with babies' faces visible - something people feel more comfortable about if they know the audience are just other parents in their local area, not a massive national group or the public).
asking for and sharing local walking ideas/tips.
as Organisers being able to post walks and manage attendees as easily as possible.
doing all of this on an intuitive mobile-optimised website or app - easy to access with one hand when doing the 3am feed!
After a LOT of careful consideration, we have chosen to pilot Mighty Networks as our new platform because it is very customisable, allows us to do these things all in one place, and allows us to create an online community that looks and feels very ‘Blaze Trails’!
Before we put all our eggs in one basket though, a small group of Organisers are trialling moving their members over and organising walks on Mighty Networks. We want to be sure it works for the specific needs of our Blaze Trails groups before we think about moving everyone over.
Our pioneering pilot Organisers have promised to be very honest about their experiences of using our new platform, so we’ll keep you posted with any feedback.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Thanks so much,
Katy
Founder, Blaze Trails CIC