The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To Starting A Women’s Empowerment Group-2024

 
The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To Starting A Women’s Empowerment Group
 

This post was originally published June 16, 2020.  Updated: December 4, 2023


Did you know that Thrive Lounge was not always... Thrive Lounge? 

In the very beginning, there was... 

no blog,

no inspirational emails, 

no Facebook group, 

no Instagram Live events. 


There was a handful of women, gathering together once a month to talk about the life changes we were going through and side hustle ideas we were attempting at the time. 

We wanted simply to learn and grow together. 

Years ago, I didn’t have any paid events. 

In fact, there was no way to pay us at all. 

We were fueled by the passion to create a community of women who just “got it.”

We wanted to be heard and understood. We wanted to have that feeling that we weren’t alone in our struggles. 

We were called “Meeting of the Minds” (MOTM for short) and we had the ugliest logo. 

Over time, the group got larger. Then it got smaller. Then it got larger again. 

Today, Thrive Lounge now serves 150K women per year through the blog, course, speaker events and online community of strong, supportive women. 

Starting a women’s group teaches you how to serve a community as well as bring people together around a common goal. 

In this post, I’ll share how to create a women’s group in your community, even if you’re just starting out with no online following, blog or email list. 



What is a Women’s Empowerment Group?

A women’s empowerment group is a community (in-person or online) where women can gather to share ideas, hopes, and challenges around a specific topic. 

For example, Thrive Lounge is all about living a purposeful life through a focus on your values and priorities and choosing your actions that align with those values. 

You can create a women’s group around any topic such as money, marriage, family, travel or even career choices. 


How To Build Your Own Local Women’s Empowerment Group

diverse women's group



Determine what the purpose of the women’s group will be

While there are a million ways we can connect with each other through shared values and interests, you want to pick one core purpose of your group. 

Here’s why: If you’re trying to talk to everyone, you’re talking to no one

How would anyone know to join your group if you don’t choose a specific topic? 

For example: If I say this women’s group will focus on financial independence. Then you can guess that we’ll talk about getting out of debt, saving more, increasing our income or investing. 

You also know we will not be talking about fancy clothes, cars, and expensive travel. 

If you’re trying to talk to Everyone, you’re talking to No One.
— Thrive Lounge

By determining the direction of your group, you make it easy to for your community to choose to be apart of certain types of conversations to be influenced by those ideas and to be around people who are focused on this topic as well. 


Name your women’s group

Choose a name that aligns with your group’s purpose. 

I wanted to call this particular step out because I don’t want you to spend a lot of time here. We like to get caught up in finding the perfect name, creating the beautiful logo and planning what our “brand” will look like. 

Choose a name that works and move forward. It doesn’t have to be perfect and you can change it over time. 

(Like how Thrive Lounge used to be called MOTM.)


Choose a few activities you can do with your women’s group

To start, you’ll need a few activities to do at your first meeting. You don’t have to have a million ideas, conversation starters will do. 

Remember, in a women’s group, the leader isn’t the center of attention. Instead, you build a relationship together through sharing experiences, lessons and helping each other. 


Choose where you’ll start your women’s group. 

There are several ways to add members to your women’s group, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that you have to start somewhere. 

Here are a few ideas: 

Online: If you’re apart of any Facebook groups that have women you may want to network with or meet in real life then send them a message and invite them out. (This is how we got our first few members to join Thrive Lounge!)

Church: If you’re already apart of a women’s ministry or a church community, then you can invite those same people to begin meeting to focus on a different topic (whatever topic you chose for your women’s group).

Work/Friend group: As adults, sometimes the only place that we make friends is at work or school classes. If this is the case for you, then start asking those work friends if they’d like to hang out as apart of your women’s group.


Find new ways to grow and support your women’s group. 

As you continue to host events (either online or in-person) for your group you will learn what activities work best for your group and what topics are most popular. 

It is this learning about your community that will help you tailor the experience to their needs and create more resources to help them grow faster. 


Women’s groups allow women from different backgrounds to come together and support each other along life’s journeys. Creating one in your area will help you become more connected with the women around you and build impactful relationships that change lives.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cyrene is a fun and accomplished workshop facilitator, learning and development guru and Human Resources professional. Being at the helm of Thrive Lounge has been a long-time dream. Through vision board workshops she plans to accomplish two-way learning. Sharing her vast years of knowledge to motivate and encourage others; while simultaneously getting the reward of great energy, ideas and questions to ponder back from each group. A super win-win. Please join our Thrive Lounge community so you too can benefit!