Before there is a calendar, a program, a launch party, or a five-year strategic plan, there are people. Where are they? What do they need? Who else is already serving them? What are they telling you — if you actually go talk to them?

In this first session, we’ll explore the earliest stage of community building: how to move from vague possibility to grounded, relational intelligence. We’ll look at how to map the lay of the land, identify your audience, build a leads list, conduct one-on-ones, notice trends, and begin moving people through an engagement pipeline. We’ll also work through a case study on building a Shabbat dinner community, giving participants a chance to apply the lifecycle tools to a real-world scenario.

In this session, we’ll explore:

• The Big Picture: Seeing the Entire Lifecycle
• Landscape Scans and Determining Your “N”
• Leads Lists + Activating Your Leads through One-on-Ones
• Being Data-Driven: Trends, Themes, Funnels, and Engagement Pipelines
• Listening Tours: Replenishing the Fire
• Case Study: Building a Shabbat Dinner Community

Participants will try on a focused Mini Mission between Part I and Part II, enabling them to immediately apply these ideas to a community, initiative, or venture they are actively building or imagining.

How do you move from listening to action without overbuilding? How do you test an idea before pouring six months, fourteen spreadsheets, and your entire soul into it? How do you create a small experiment that teaches you something real — and then use what you learn to build toward something people can point to and say, This is a thing?

In this second session, we’ll move from exploration into action. Together, we’ll learn how to design Minimum Viable Projects, “ship the calendar,” leverage moments when Jews naturally emerge, create a communal narrative, iterate based on what you learn, and think four steps down the chessboard. We’ll then explore the idea of a Strategic Perch: a project or moment that makes the vision of your community concrete, manifest, and palpable. Finally, we’ll consider what happens after momentum: when to cycle back, when to grow, and when to hand off leadership so the work can keep breathing beyond you.

In this session, we’ll explore:

• Debriefing Our Mini Mission
• The “Mini Cupcake”: Testing Small Before Building Big
• Shipping the Calendar and Creating a Communal Narrative
• Iteration and Thinking Four Steps Down the Chessboard
• Putting the Leaders Together
• The Strategic Perch — Show, Don’t Tell, Your Vision
• Cycle Back or Hand Off — Discerning What Comes Next

Participants will leave with a clearer map of where their community-building work currently sits in the lifecycle — and what their next bold, concrete move might be.

Erica Frankel (Joyful Coach, Toastmaster, Expert Thrifter) is the Executive Director of Assembly.

Over the past 16 years, Erica has founded and grown five new Jewish organizations and initiatives into existence, has touched the lives of over 20,000 Jewish college students, has trained and supported more than 500 rabbis and Jewish educators, and has seeded a thriving Jewish ecosystem in Harlem. She holds an MA in Dance and Sacred Texts from NYU and was a Wexner Field Fellow.

Erica and her husband Rabbi Dimitry Ekshtut (and their two toddlers) annually welcome ~600 unique young adults into their home for Shabbat and holidays, Jewish learning, and service.

Leah Kahn (Maestra Educator, Artist of Gathering, Shabbat Queen) is Assembly’s Vice President of Education.

She previously served as the Senior Director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Experience at Hillel International, where she oversaw the Jewish Learning Fellowship (JLF). Over the last decade, Leah has developed a unique pedagogical approach that has been used to train more than 400 rabbis and educators. She is the recipient of the Covenant Foundation’s Pomegranate Prize, an inaugural member of the M2 Pedagogies Research Fellowship, and a Wexner Field Fellow.

Leah is also a certified yoga teacher, lifelong modern dancer, Shabbat enthusiast, and a mean vegan cook. She lives in Skokie, IL with her husband and two children.

Melissa Werbow (List Maker, Hosting Ninja, Educational Gadfly) is a Community Builder for Assembly’s project IYUN.

When she isn’t with IYUN, Melissa serves as the Education Director at the Hill Havurah in Washington, DC. She is passionate about creating authentic communities and empowering learners to take ownership of their Jewish tradition. She has spent her career straddling the worlds of congregational, adult, and day school education – three arenas that don’t talk to each other nearly enough.

Melissa and Rabbi Mike Werbow are the parents of three mostly delightful children and one very spoiled dog. She is currently obsessing about gluten-free vegetarian cooking, parenting teenagers, and what novel she should read next.