Is there a way for non-members to add themselves to Friends/Affiliate list?

Pam, thanks for the further clarification, but I think we're all on the same page and saying the same things here haha, just maybe in different ways.

1. Per Brian, FTH is 'not interested' in being MailChimp, etc. Just for emailing a few dozen members and immediate contacts.
2. No one here is trying to or wanting to send unsolicited emails.
3. Cleaning lists and avoiding the willy-nilly are good things.

All I was asking if there was a way to potentially keep in touch with our still-interested already-opted-ins (as we clean up our list (on Meetup), as you and Brian both suggested) and move those still interested to another platform (potentially FTH email lists) to allow our club to continue to keep in touch with those who wanted to keep in touch. If this HAD been possible, I thought it also had potential as a 'Blog Subscription' type of list. Since we can't do that on FTH (which I now understand we can't/shouldn't), what we have available to offer our Meetups is Facebook.

What I foresee happening is that we'll contact our Meetup list and invite them to join us on FB. I know everyone isn't on FB, so we might get a few and the rest will be gone when we clean up the list. I don't know that we have any volunteers willing to put the time into doing the one-by-one thing. Not good or bad, necessarily...it is what it is and we do what we can with what we have available.

Just to be clear, I'm not upset or angry (haha sometimes difficult to tell just with text). As someone who does social media marketing for a living (I'm VPPR currently), I just told our executive committee that it would be a shame if we couldn't save some of these already-opted-ins and I'd offer to look into our options before we just bulk deleted everyone on Meetup. I just needed a definitive answer YEA or NAY whether this was possible/advisable before moving on this.

I believe I have the answer to the question I asked, so I'll feel better about being able to make an informed decision about deleting our Meetup contacts. I appreciate your (and Brian's) time and feedback.

I don't know that we have any volunteers willing to put the time into doing the one-by-one thing. Not good or bad, necessarily...it is what it is and we do what we can with what we have available.

Long Answer:

You can capture the contacts into any group - as per my earlier post

We were referring to cleaning up your FTH lists - delete guests and prospects) after a couple of months if they haven't returned. They can always be added back later if they visit again

Not suggesting or recommending this - but you could do a bulk import (Quick Add) if you can format your data as for importing members from TI - but make sure you have the correct group selected.

Short Answer: Possible but not advisable