Run a directory for your group
Set up a shared circle for a class, team, church, running club, nonprofit, or small business so the roster maintains itself.
What this is
Every group has one person who keeps the list. They chase people every autumn, retype what comes back, send around a PDF that is wrong within a month, and do it again next year.
A shared circle removes the job rather than making it easier. There is no roster to maintain, because everyone in the group keeps their own details current and the whole group reads them live.
Before you start
- Decide who is in the group. You can add more people later.
- You do not need everyone to be on Tether first — you can invite them as you go.
Steps
- Open Circles and create a new circle.
- Choose Directory rather than Group — it is built for a bigger, more formal roster: a class, a team, a congregation, a whole club.
- Get people in. Share the invite link or QR code and let people join themselves — post it in the team group chat, print it on a sign-up sheet, hand it out at the first meeting — or bring in a roster you already have with Bulk invite, which reads a CSV or spreadsheet. Either way, nobody is added silently; each person gets a request and chooses whether to join.
- Decide what the circle sees about you — a shared circle is still a circle, and it grants exactly what you have given it, nothing more.
- Promote co-organisers. A directory this size should not depend on one person, and more than one admin can share the invite link, add people, and keep things running.
What to expect afterward
When someone in the group moves or changes their number, the directory is right the same day. No announcement, no reply-all, no new roster PDF — whether it’s a school class list, a sports team, a church directory, a running club, a neighbourhood group, or a small nonprofit or business keeping track of members and volunteers.
People who never join Tether can still be in the circle as ordinary contacts you maintain — the group just does not get the self-updating benefit for them.
Troubleshooting
Someone is in the circle but I cannot see their address. They have not granted it to that circle. That is the design: circles grant, they never deny, so a field you cannot see was never shared rather than hidden from you.
Can I hand the circle over? Yes — promote another member to admin, or transfer ownership outright. The directory does not belong to whoever happened to create it.
Someone I did not expect can share the invite link. Check who can invite in the circle’s settings — a directory defaults to admins only, so open it up deliberately if you want any member to be able to share it.
How many people can be in one directory? Up to 500.
How many shared circles can I have? Ten on the free plan, twenty-five on Tether+.