Moving your group from Meetup

1. Check what your Meetup export contains. Meetup lets organisers download their group's member list, but what the file includes depends on your Meetup plan and changes from time to time. Open it and look for an email address column before anything else: email addresses are how the import recognises existing accounts and how invitations are sent.
2. Create your group. Name it, say where it meets and choose the topics it covers. Your group is yours to set up the way it already works.
3. Import your members. Download the template from your group's member import page and copy each member's first name, last name and email address into it. Nothing else from the Meetup file is needed. You see a preview of exactly who will be invited before anything is saved.
4. Tell your members what is happening. Post an announcement on your Meetup group before the invitations go out, so the email does not arrive as a surprise. Include your new group's link, so anyone who was not in the import can join you directly.
5. Let your members join you. Everyone in the import is invited by email and activates their own account, so nobody is signed up on their behalf and no passwords change hands.
6. Schedule your next events here. Events are not imported. Recreate your next few events here, and leave past ones where they are on Meetup.
7. Point your Meetup group here. Your group gets a page saying it has moved, with your next event on it - give Meetup as where you moved from and the page says so. Link to it from your Meetup group, within what Meetup's own rules allow, and keep the old group running for as long as members are still finding their way across.

Without email addresses the import cannot invite anyone, so your announcement on Meetup does the work instead: share your new group's link and ask your members to join you there. Whether email addresses are included can depend on your Meetup plan, so check what yours offers before you start.