Community events are a great way to bring friends and neighbors together. From fundraising drives for a local charity to farmer’s markets that support small businesses, there are many different types of community events that will allow the community to interact on a whole new level. They can also help build a bond within the community. Depending on what type of event is held, you can also be a great way to give back to the community.
Here at Let’s Roam, we strive to create opportunities for people to connect with one another. We know how important this is in a community, so we’ve put together a list of community event ideas that will help promote a sense of community and inclusivity.
Connect with your community with Let’s Roam!
Building a strong community is extremely important. This not only helps everyone feel more safe and secure in their neighborhoods or communities, but it also makes people feel much happier when they know they have a community by their side. We have designed a library of fun activities to bring people together such as scavenger hunts, virtual games, and scratch-off adventure books.
Fun Community Events To Promote Interaction
You’ll find an extensive list of some of our favorite community event ideas below. However, before we get started on the list of great community events, we wanted to give you a few planning tips and tricks that we learned from years of experience.
Decide what type of community event you want to organize.
Put simply, a community event is any event that focuses on the local community and the people that live there. This includes people of all ages as well as local businesses or organizations. These events are especially designed to help bring people together, and the sky truly is the limit when it comes to what kind of event to organize.
If you’re having trouble deciding on what type of event is best, make sure to ask your local community members or community leaders. They may have some great ideas on what to do and may even have some great connections in town that will help your event be even more successful! This is also a good way to make sure that you have their support as it can make an enormous difference when it comes to how successful the event is!
The biggest factor you need to consider when deciding on a community event is if the event matches your target audience. Having a heavy metal band play when the community is mostly retirees may not be the best option. Likewise, if you live in a community that’s full of young families, you may want to have lots of activities that can keep the kiddos occupied while the adults get to relax for a bit!
Plan it all out.
Once you decide what type of event you want to organize, it’s time for the planning to begin. Think about what type of venues you have access to in town to decide which one is most appropriate in terms of space and rental costs. You will definitely need some event planning skills to accomplish many of the activities on this list. If you don’t know if you’re up to it, find someone you know is awesome at event planning!
Rental fees can add up quickly. If the event is for a local charity, check to see if anyone will allow you to host it free of charge. Many restaurants and bars will allow it if you hold the event on a weeknight or during the day when it’s normally slow.
Make sure to market it.
A community event is only as good as the people who come to it, so make sure to market it like crazy! You could post on social media, hang flyers up around town, or ask local businesses to help promote it for you.
If you have no idea where to even start, you can either hire a freelancer through a website like Upwork to help you. Or you can ask local students for their support. Many will jump at the chance to get some real-life experience under their belt, and many will want nothing in return except a letter of reference.
1. Community Scavenger Hunts
Scavenger hunts are a fun way to promote team building, productivity, collaboration, and critical thinking. They can also help build trust and respect amongst team members. And did we mention they are a lot of fun?
While you can set up an old-fashioned scavenger hunt with hidden items or challenges to complete around your community, why not take the easy route and have Let’s Roam create a customized hunt just for you and your community? Our event planners will help you coordinate and host your event regardless if you have a handful of people or a few thousand!
If you’re organizing a charity event, Let’s Roam can help make your event a whopping success. The Let’s Roam Foundation offers $500 worth of items for charity fundraisers. They can also help you build a custom fundraising event page that can help generate awareness and sales on event tickets and associated products.
2. DIY Trivia Night
Trivia nights are a great way to promote teamwork and conversation. Plus, they give everyone a way to show off all of the useless information that they know! To make the trivia night your own, you can customize the questions surrounding people, places, or things in your local community. You can then download question-and-answer sheets online or make your own using programs like Canva. Then, you just need to find the perfect venue to hold your trivia night and get the fun started.
3. Community-Wide Donation Drive
Helping others in need is the perfect way to bring people together. Not only does it give everyone the chance to give back to their community, but it also gives them the opportunity to appreciate how lucky they are. You can get the ball rolling by choosing a charity that you would like to work with. Don’t forget to ask them what they need as this can often be very different from what we expect.
After you’ve chosen a charity and have a good idea of what items you should be collecting, it’s time to set up donation boxes and drop-off spot locations around town so that people can donate items conveniently. Some of the best items to collect include non-perishable food, school supplies, baby items, feminine hygiene products, and winter clothing.
4. Black Tie Gala and Silent Auction
Pretty much everyone likes to get dressed to the nines every once in a while. A black-tie gala gives everyone a chance to show off their fanciest dress and is a great idea for a fundraising event for a local charity.
Most black-tie galas include some type of silent auction or a raffle featuring high-quality items. Many of the items included in the silent auction usually have been donated by local or national businesses. This could be anything from vouchers for cooking classes, tee time at a golf club, or hotel stays. Money is raised for a particular charity using the proceeds from ticket sales and from the silent auction or raffle tickets. This is a good option for fundraising if you have the manpower and time to pull it off.
5. 10K or Fun Run
Across the country, you can find everything from one-mile fun runs to ultra marathons taking place throughout the year. These large outdoor events can be ideal for promoting health and wellness in your community. In the lead-up to the event, you can schedule training runs in one of the local neighborhoods. This gives people the chance to connect with a new running buddy that will help them stay motivated both before and during the run.
Expert tip: Make sure to check with your local police before starting to organize the run. Some communities may have restrictions against these types of runs while others may force you to hire security and medical services if the size of the group gets too large. The registration fees can be used to offset the costs associated with organizing the race or you can donate them to a local charity.
6. Nature Walks
Research has proven time and time again that being surrounded by nature is good for our mind, body, and soul. There has even been a new “trend” developed in Japan called “forest bathing” where people prioritize spending time in nature as a way to benefit their physical and mental health.
If running is not your community’s “style” but being outdoors is, then why not host a nature walk? A nature walk could either take place in a local park, in the forest on private land, or somewhere in between. The walk could have educational elements to it where people get to learn more about the flora and fauna in your region. Create a checklist of all the things that people could look out for and you can turn the walk into a mini treasure hunt that is perfect for kids and adults!
7. Farmer’s Market
Over the past few decades, farmer’s markets have risen in popularity all around the world. They are an awesome way to connect local businesses and farmers with buyers and can help you find new products that you never would have been able to get your hands on otherwise.
Organizing an ongoing farmer’s market in your community can take a look of work, but it is well worth it in the end. You will need to find a place that you can use consistently regardless if it’s every week, every two weeks, or every month. Double-check that it will work for different types of weather. This could mean ensuring that there is shade available for hot, sunny days and that the area can withstand rain without turning into a massive mud pit.
It’s also a good idea to try and attract a wide variety of vendors to sell many different items. Farmer’s markets don’t just need to be produce! You can have your local coffee shop set up a stand or even have some of the boutiques in town bring some of their more unique product offerings. Not only does this attract a wider variety of people to the market but it also gives them a reason to mix and mingle more over a cup of coffee or a slice of cake!
8. Show and Tell
Show and Tell isn’t just for kids in classrooms anymore! Much like a talent show, show and tell gives everyone the chance to show off some of their favorite things they own. Whether it was the beautifully engraved tea chest that they got in China or the hand-woven tapestry that has been passed down through their family for generations, this is a fun way to get everyone talking about their personal lives, family backgrounds, or aspirations. It also gives community members the perfect opportunity to learn more about their neighbors.
9. White Elephant Gift Exchange
We’ve all received a gift at one point that we have absolutely no idea what to do with. Maybe it was something you already have or something you have very little use for. Rather than throwing it away and having it end up in a landfill, how about organizing a giant white elephant gift exchange?
During the gift exchange, everyone will bring a gift they don’t want. You can organize it like a Secret Santa gift exchange where everyone is given the name of a person to buy for. Alternatively, you can have everyone bring their items and set them on a big table. Each person then grabs one of the gifts and opens it up. They can either choose to keep the gift for themselves or swap it with someone else.
The great thing about white elephant gift exchanges is that they give items a new lease on life while giving people the chance to communicate with one another. Who knows, you may have two neighbors who have never really gotten a chance to interact and find themselves sharing a love for duck-shaped cutting boards or fluffy slippers!
10. Beach or Forest Clean Up
As humans, we put major stress on our environment. From endless piles of garbage to contaminated soil and water, we aren’t doing a very good job of letting Mother Nature rest peacefully. You can do your part in protecting our environment by holding a beach or forest clean-up in your local community.
Planning a clean-up is pretty easy. You simply need to pick the place you want to go, buy some heavy-duty garbage bags and some work gloves, and then try to convince people to come. Hopefully, this shouldn’t be too difficult since people can see the impact of their work and know that it’s for a good cause, but sometimes, it can be hard to get people to commit to any outdoor activity!
11. Neighborhood Block Party
Community events don’t have to be all work and no play! Block parties are a great social event to get everyone together for a relaxing day or evening. During a block party, you simply close off a section of your street for a big street party or find an area in the center of town that is easily accessible. You can then set up tables and chairs for people to sit down at, and organize a handful of fun activities.
If you really want to spice it up, you can ask local artists or a band to play live music throughout the day and have local vendors and restaurants selling everything from refreshments to handicrafts. The size of the block party really depends on the type and size of the community that you live in so make sure you’re planning something that’s appropriate and that can bring people of all ages together.
Make sure you work with local police to help you shut everything down for a few hours and encourage local businesses to participate. In order to make the block party successful, you may also want to be careful on what dates you schedule it for. Hosting a block party over a long weekend when people tend to travel or too close to a holiday like Christmas or Thanksgiving may make it difficult for some people to come. Instead, try to plan it on a boring old Saturday or Sunday to give more people the chance to attend. As the saying goes, the more the merrier!
12. Halloween Activities
For many of us, trick-or-treating and Halloween parties helped create some of our best childhood memories. I still remember many of my costumes from decades ago! Unfortunately, not all communities have Halloween festivities. If yours doesn’t, why not take it upon yourself to change that?
Trick-or-treating is one of the easiest things you can organize as long as the local community is on board. You simply need to inform people of the scheduled trick-or-treat times for different neighborhoods and encourage local residents to have plenty of candy on hand to give out. If your community already has trick-or-treating, you can always take things up a notch by organizing a massive Halloween party or even putting together a haunted house!
Another great Halloween activity is a Let’s Roam Ghost Hunt! These hunts are specially designed to help you learn about the people who lived and died in an area and the ghost stories that surround them. We have ghost hunts for destinations all across the country, and you can find more details about them on our website.
13. Community Garden
If you want to start a community activity that will keep on giving year after year, a community garden may be exactly what you need! Community gardens give the people in your community the perfect chance to spend time together while showing off their green thumb!
To start setting up a community garden, you’ll need to find available land where plants can grow. You then need to get the people in your community motivated to help secure the resources for it and to take care of it. Together, you can then decide what will go into the community garden plot. Do you want to focus on growing herbs, flowers, vegetables, or a little bit of everything?
You will also need to decide how you’ll fund the garden. Does everyone need to pay an annual membership to access it? Or is it something that you want to make accessible to everyone? Make sure you put all of the ground rules (pun intended!) in writing when you get started to make sure there’s no confusion in the future about it.
14. Food Festival
No matter where you are in the world, people love to eat which makes food festivals a great way to bring your community together. There are many different ways you can organize it. You could have food trucks from the surrounding area come. You may also want to include a cook-off where community members show off their cooking skills for a panel of food judges.
This could also turn into a fantastic way for community members to bond as all the foodies come together, sharing information about the area’s best restaurants, where to buy the best ingredients, or even cooking tips.
15. Movie Nights
Now that everyone has Netflix and Hulu, it seems like movie theaters are becoming a thing of the past. However, there’s something really special about seeing your favorite movie on the big screen surrounded by friends and family.
Movie nights are a wonderful way to help people connect. Best of all, all you need is a white wall, a projector, and a big enough space for people to sit. Depending on the size of the group, this could be in someone’s yard with the screen projected onto their garage or it could be in a local park with a blow-up screen. You can sell tickets to the event and offer refreshments. If you want to really promote interaction, you can even tack on things like open mic nights, trivia games, and more before the movie starts. There are many different options for organizing a movie night which means that you can customize it to make it perfect for your community.
16. Virtual Events
While many of the event ideas listed above are for outdoor events or get-togethers, there are many virtual events that you may want to consider. This can allow people with mobility issues to join in the fun as well! From virtual game nights with online board games to virtual escape rooms, there are many different ways that you can connect with your community even if people are unable to attend in-person events. Check out Let’s Roam for more information and inspiration on all the cool things that you can do!
Ready to roam?
We hope this list of fun events has given you the inspiration to organize one yourself! A strong community offers a ton of benefits in regard to camaraderie, safety, and wellness. If you want to learn more ways to promote bonding with friends, families, and communities, make sure to head over to our Adventure Book blog. Here, you’ll find tons of great articles about relationships, wellness, travel, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you want to build a strong community, hosting community events is a great way to promote interaction and bonding.
Outdoor movie nights, block parties, 10k runs, and nature walks are all great ideas for community events that promote interaction.
If you are looking for something to do indoors, trivia nights, game nights, gala dinners, and Halloween parties are all fun community events.
Community events can help strengthen your community which is great for safety, and the mental and physical health and wellness of your residents.
The first things you need to do are decide on a community event, get buy-in from the community, plan it, and then market it!