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I’ve been trying to organize a community-led archive of local history, but I’m hitting a wall with getting consistent contributions. People seem interested at first, but then the shared documents just sit there half-finished. Has anyone else run a project where maintaining volunteer momentum was the biggest hurdle?

Yeah, I tried something similar last year. We had a burst of interest, then silence. We carved the work into tiny tasks and started a weekly 60 minute hangout where people could drop in and share one artifact they found. It helped a little, but the energy still faded after a few months.

I kept thinking maybe we needed a clear end goal or a publishable piece, but even with a target, folks wandered off. We had a dozen folks sign up at first, and only a couple finished something.

Another angle is the scope. It felt like the archive kept growing bigger while the people kept getting thinner. We pared to a few themes and promised a small public exhibit, but that was still hard to sustain; I spent a weekend sorting folders and felt like nothing moved.

Do you think the bottleneck is onboarding or the workload itself?

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