Special interest groups in an association

A professional association's special interest groups bring together members who share a specialism, a business concern or a cause, to meet and share what they know. This branch covers those groups, and its parts divide by the part a member plays in one: using a group to get into its niche, and starting and running a group. It leaves the membership the groups sit inside to what a membership supplies, the freelance forum at each conference and the online group for freelances to where a new freelance takes the questions, the crossing into a niche itself to choosing a specialism, the freelance directory to what a freelance directory listing returns, the veterinary writer's work to veterinary medical writing, and informal local groups to local groups of writers.

• Using a special interest group to enter a niche — the glossary, links and workshop listing a subject group supplies a newcomer, the questions it lets a member put directly to regulators, and the association's journal, workshops and symposia used beside it
• Starting and running a special interest group — members' demand for a group, what a group is for, the proposal to the governing committee, the launch and the first months, the committee, its succession and its volunteers, sharing out the work and what a small group cannot do, a small group's standing output and aims, a programme built with other groups and with the regulators, informal formats, and a working group across the groups