Why We List More Than Business Networking Events
Netwarming Team · Friday, October 16, 2026
People ask why an animal shelter volunteer orientation is listed on a networking app. The short answer is that the research on how people actually find work points away from rooms full of people who came to network.
Open Netwarming and you will find chamber mixers, BNI chapters and bar association lunches, which is what you would expect. You will also find a volunteer orientation at an animal rescue, a gallery opening, a Saturday trail cleanup and a city club supper.
People ask about that. It is a fair question, so here is the answer.
Roughly a third of what we list is not business networking
Of the 3,336 events on Netwarming as of October 2026:
| Category | Share |
|---|---|
| Industry — professional associations | 38% |
| Networking — chambers, Rotary, BNI, referral groups | 29% |
| Give back — causes and volunteering | 25% |
| Social — country clubs and city clubs | 7% |
So two thirds is what anyone would call business networking, and a third is not. That third is there on purpose.
The reason is weak ties
The idea goes back to the sociologist Mark Granovetter, whose 1973 paper The Strength of Weak Ties found something counterintuitive: people tended to hear about the jobs they took from acquaintances rather than close friends. Your close friends know what you know and move in the rooms you already move in. The person who tells you something genuinely new is usually somebody you know slightly.
That stayed a well-loved theory for about fifty years, because you cannot run an experiment on somebody's social network. Then in 2022 a team did. Rajkumar, Saint-Jacques, Bojinov, Brynjolfsson and Aral published A causal test of the strength of weak ties in Science, using randomised variation in LinkedIn's "People You May Know" across more than 20 million members over five years. Weak ties turned out to be more useful for moving jobs than strong ones, on average — Granovetter's theory, finally tested at scale.
It is not unlimited. The paper found an inverted-U relationship rather than "weaker is always better", so the very weakest connections are not the most valuable either. But the direction holds, and the direction is the point.
What that means for a Tuesday evening
A business networking event is, by construction, a room of people with similar goals who came to do the same thing you came to do. That is useful — it is 67% of what we list — but it is a room of fairly strong ties in the making, and everybody in it is also selling.
A Saturday morning clearing a trail is a room of people who have one thing in common with you and nothing else. Different industries, different ages, different reasons for being there. Nobody has a pitch. You are not a prospect, you are the person holding the other end of the log. Those conversations go differently, and the ties they make are precisely the weak kind the research keeps pointing at.
The same is true of a gallery opening or a club supper. Not instead of the chamber breakfast — as well as.
The data backs the practical version too
The categories keep genuinely different hours, which means they reach genuinely different people. Volunteering is the only category on Netwarming that owns Saturday morning, and the only one spread evenly through the week. Social clubs are 42% evening. Professional associations are a lunchtime activity.
If every event on here ran Tuesday at 7:30am, we would only ever serve people whose lives allow a Tuesday at 7:30am. Shift workers, parents doing the school run, anyone whose employer does not consider networking part of the job. The breadth is not decoration; it is who can come at all.
If you only want business networking, that is one tap
None of this is an argument that you should go to a trail cleanup. Plenty of people want chambers and referral groups and nothing else, and that is a completely reasonable way to use this.
Every organization on Netwarming is filed under one of four categories — Networking, Industry, Give back and Social — so you can filter to the rooms you want and never see the rest. The categories are there so the breadth costs you nothing.
What we will not do is decide in advance that the only networking worth listing is the kind with a name badge and a pitch. The evidence does not support it, and the best introduction most people get this year will come from somebody they met doing something else.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are volunteering events listed on a networking app?
Because the research on how people find work points to weak ties — acquaintances rather than close contacts. A volunteering morning puts you with people from different industries who are not selling anything, which is exactly the kind of connection that research says matters. Volunteering and causes are about 25% of what Netwarming lists.
Is Netwarming only for business networking?
No. About two thirds of the events we list are business networking — chambers, referral groups and professional associations — and the rest are volunteering, causes and social clubs. Every organization is filed under one of four categories so you can filter to only what you want.
What is the strength of weak ties?
A finding from sociologist Mark Granovetter's 1973 paper that people more often hear about new opportunities from acquaintances than from close friends, because close friends share your information. It was confirmed experimentally in 2022 by a study in Science using randomised data from more than 20 million LinkedIn members over five years.
How do I see only business networking events on Netwarming?
Filter by category. Organizations are filed as Networking (chambers, Rotary, BNI, referral groups), Industry (professional associations), Give back (causes and volunteering) or Social (clubs). Selecting the first two gives you business networking only.
Explore local networking events: Local Organizations · Upcoming Networking Events