“By tapping into the crowd, Chipping in is a great way to help cover costs and strengthen the Meetups you love. Stronger Meetups mean stronger communities, and it’s up to us to make it happen.”
This morning Meetup posted a “Chip in” button will be added to the site in order to help organizers defray costs. 
“Great Meetups are made of great members who care about their communities. These members know that organizing a Meetup takes work, and in addition to the planning, scheduling, and coordinating, it also takes money. Whether it’s jerseys for game days, craft supplies for projects, rental fees for equipment, or even just snacks, we know that sometimes it takes stuff—in addition to awesome members—to make awesome Meetups happen,” Tristan Louis, General Manager for Community Finance at Meetup, wrote via email. Currently, ‘chipping in’ is only available for US-based meetups. International chip in options will be coming soon!
“We want to make it easy for supportive members to chip in on costs and help make Meetup groups even better. That’s why, as of today, we’re adding a “Chip in” button on group and event pages, allowing members to contribute, no matter what device they use to access Meetup,” informed the blog.
Avid Meetups’ organizers weighed in:
Jesse, the Organizer behind the Central Park Sketching & Art Meetup Group, reports, “Contributions have been working great. I’m using the money to pay for the name tags and markers I use for the group, for park and museum reservations, and to pay for myself to scout out new locations.”
Contributions are also an easy way to cover Meetup fees. Andrew, the Organizer of the Garden State Kayakers Meetup, says, “All contributions go straight into paying the dues for the group.”
Timothy from the Central Kentucky Photography Group agrees, “The money we collect goes towards Meetup activities and website fees. It’s easy to set up, easy to use, and it works.”
Meetups indicated that “Chip in” is “the beginning of a much longer story around how we can help our organizers 
build stronger meetups by injecting more crowd-funded efforts into the mix. With this first effort, we’re trying to carefully introduce ways to help the organizers without requiring them to ask the uncomfortable questions surrounding money. We know that organizers often get stuck being the ones paying for the pizza and we want to change that dynamic by having everyone chip in.”
Meetup’s Tristan Louis further shared his insight in our email exchange:
Erin: Which platform that you’ll be using for your campaign, your campaign goals and how you will allocate funding, or will the “chipping in” solely be on meetups.com?
Tristan: “Right now they’ll be on Meetup.com (both mobile web and desktop web), iOS, and Android.
How the organizers allocate funding is really up to themselves.”
Erin: Our readers are will be curious about why Meetup has turned to crowdfunding.
Tristan: “The funding of the campaign will, literally, come from the crowd of Meetup users. There are a costs associated with organizing any kind of event, whether it’s a small group and a pizza or a large event with public speakers, a big venue, and other great things. When we looked at the space, we realized we needed to help organizers on top of our platform find new ways to spread those costs and Chip-in was born. With Chip-in, organizers can receive contributions from the members of their group and go back to focusing on building a better experience instead of having to deals with the mechanics of getting money.”
Have a crowdfunding offering you'd like to share? Submit an offering for consideration using our Submit a Tip form and we may share it on our site!