1. What an Experience Tribe is

An Experience Tribe is a group that puts events on, rather than a group that attends them. The difference is who carries the risk. At a normal event one person books the venue, fronts the money, and hopes enough people come. Here the group pools what the event costs before anything is booked, and the event happens because the money is already there.

This is the cheapest thing in the system to start. It needs very little money up front. The work is setting the first event up and then selling tickets and memberships, and the money largely arrives as it is needed.

2. The membership, and why it is the whole engine

Two gatherings a month come with membership, at one monthly price. A member who comes to both is paying about half what two tickets would cost, which is the reason to be a member rather than a ticket buyer.

The membership is what makes the next event possible before anyone sells a ticket for it. Monthly money that arrives whether or not this month's event sells well is the difference between a group that runs events and a group that ran some events once.

Non-members buy tickets. The ticket price is set so that a person who comes twice is better off joining, which is how members are made.

3. Pooling the money before it is spent

Nobody fronts an event out of their own pocket. The group decides what the event is, works out what it costs, and the money is in the pool before the venue is booked.

The order, every time:

1. Decide the event and who is running it.
2. Cost it out honestly, including the things people forget: insurance, cleaning, the deposit, the one person who has to be paid.
3. Say what it needs to break even, in tickets or in members.
4. Fund it from the pool, or do not run it.
5. Settle it afterwards, in the open, so everyone sees what it actually cost.

An event that cannot be funded before it happens does not happen. That is the rule that keeps this from turning into one person's debt.

4. Who is paid and who is not

Somebody always ends up doing more work, and the honest thing is to pay them. The person running an event, the person doing the books, the person cleaning up at midnight. It is a role, with hours, agreed before the event.

Everyone else is contributing, and that is counted, not paid. The Base's record of contributions holds here: hours given are a contribution, not a favor, and they go in the record.

Nobody who decides a spend is the person paid by it. That rule comes from The Base and it matters most here, because event money moves fast and in small amounts.

5. What happens when it makes money

An Experience Tribe that works will clear more than its events cost, and a group that has not decided what happens to that will argue about it. So the backup plan is written before the first event, not after the good one.

The options the group picks from:

• Toward a Hearth. The next, bigger thing. A place of your own means no venue hire at all.
• Toward community tools. Equipment, a van, a kitchen, whatever the community needs list says.
• Held in the fund at the next level, governed by The Base's level rules.

Which one is the group's choice. Having chosen one is not optional.

6. The rhythm

Two a month, on days people can predict, beats five good events at random. A community forms around a rhythm it can rely on, and it does not form around a calendar it has to check.

Mix the kinds. Something social, something that teaches, something quiet. A tribe that only does one kind of evening attracts one kind of person, and then it stops growing.

7. Working with an events app

This template runs alongside whatever event software a group already uses. Tickets, invitations, reminders and lists are all solved problems and there is nothing to gain from solving them again.

What this adds is the part those apps do not do: pooling the money before the booking, counting contributions, deciding who is paid, and saying where the surplus goes.

8. What this template does not do

It does not sell tickets, take payments, or hold money. It does not book venues, find speakers, or run the event. It does not promise an audience, and it does not promise an event will break even. What it does is make sure that when an event does not break even, nobody is left personally holding the cost.