You Might Be a Community Generalist If...

Field notes concerning people who seem to get involved in everything, including things that are technically none of their business.

I'm becoming increasingly suspicious of people who claim they don't really do anything.

Especially when they say it immediately before telling me about the fundraiser they helped organize, the neighbor whose plumbing they fixed, the community group they've been helping, and the three people they introduced who are now planning an event together.

Apparently, that's nothing.

Okay.

I've been trying to find a name for this sort of activity, partly because I keep meeting people who appear to have been doing it their entire lives.

I've settled, provisionally, on Community Generalism.

It sounds terribly official, doesn't it?

Don't worry. There isn't a licensing board.

Think about the people you know.

There's probably somebody who organizes the neighborhood gathering every year. Somebody who knows everybody. Somebody who can fix almost anything. Somebody who makes sure volunteers have something useful to do, and somebody who organizes the volunteers who organize the other volunteers.

There's also somebody who shows up when help is needed, despite having absolutely no interest in being in charge.

Then there are the people who've spent decades keeping households, families, and informal networks functioning. They arrange transportation, care for relatives, share tools, remember who needs what, teach children, organize celebrations, and keep various generations pointed in approximately the right direction.

Try coordinating that many people in an office and somebody will offer you a management position.

Do it for your family and it's just Tuesday.

These are not all the same kinds of work. Some require specialized training. Others are learned by participating, watching somebody else do something, getting it wrong, and trying again. A person might have deep expertise in one field and still move comfortably among several others.

What interests me is the combination of practical knowledge, relationships, curiosity, and the ability to recognize when somebody else's experience might make a difference.

We don't always have a useful description for that.

Calling it volunteering doesn't tell us much. Some of these people are volunteers. Some contribute through their jobs. Others are retired, caring for family members, studying, organizing independently, or doing things simply because they enjoy them.

And plenty of people move among those circumstances over a lifetime.

I'm not suggesting we turn every helpful neighbor into a professional community development consultant.

Please. We have enough consultants.

Nor am I proposing that everybody take on more unpaid work. Community Generalism isn't a job requirement, a measure of personal virtue, or an obligation to be useful every waking minute.

It's a way of noticing what people already know and do, including the work that tends to disappear because nobody thought to give it a name.

Imagine what might happen if more of those people knew one another.

An event organizer meets someone with equipment to share. A neighborhood group discovers that a volunteer organization has already solved a problem they're facing. A specialist finds a community project they actually want to join. Two people who thought their interests were unrelated discover they have rather a lot to talk about.

Or somebody meets a few neighbors and has a pleasant afternoon.

I wouldn't underestimate that accomplishment.

Catalyst Guild is exploring a Community Generalist Network as one way interested people and organizations might make those connections and help shape what the network becomes. It's still being developed. It isn't a Guild membership requirement, an employment agency, or another organization everybody has to join.

And the name Community Generalist is an invitation to recognize a possibility, not a label anyone has to accept.

You might already have a much better name for what you do.

I'd like to hear it.

For now, think about the people around you, including the ones who insist they don't do very much.

You might be a Community Generalist.

We should probably compare notes.