BuddyPress.org

Hi,

We are working with some large national nonprofit organization to put their groups on our site.

Each organization has a number of groups under them. These organizations would like to upload the groups affiliated with them onto our site, so our site becomes a very useful online directory to show all their groups.

Then they expect these groups to join our site and claim their respective group listing.

Does Buddypress support this type of function? We thought about using Directory plugins like WP GeoDirectory for this function. Here is our dilema:
1) create a list and expect future members to claim it is a readily available out of box function. However, directories offer very limited group functions. Buddypress is perfect for our long term group function needs.

2) However, if a group can only be created by a member who has already joined the site, then we might not be able to start with a very short list of groups, which makes our site much less useful initially. For example, if BuddyPress only allows local groups who have joined our site to create groups, then when we launch, our list of groups might be so short that visitors might think our site is not that useful because 95% of the groups who have not yet sign up as a member are not listed.

Any suggestions how we could balance our two needs?

Thanks a lot.

Jing