but it would make sense that the communities can be used to help the small accounts that are part of them.

This is a good point. If the allotments to complete newbies are insufficient, it would surely provide an impetus for them to join communities and within communities, as you say, they would likely find delegations that would allow them to act in order to make bonds and Steem which would allow them to grow their account. (That is awfully complicated tho for an online social media site!)

Being part of a smaller group of people who are active outside of the platform (such as in chat servers or with real-life meetups), is a lot more tangible and do-able.

Totally agreed!!

I think as far as the needed delegation in the beginning (at this moment of writing) is less than 60 SP. That's not very much. I'm not sure if Stinc would even think about delegating SP to smaller communities (like @naturalmedicine) so that we could delegate to newbies that we vet. That said, there are larger accounts within Nat Med to fulfill that need. I think if someone gets over the amount of SP to "normally interact" (and here again, we'd have to define this), then the delegation gets taken away.

I think it is difficult to as a new user to invest-- that is, before they have any positive experiences. I for one have earned all of my Steem and I'm not in a place to invest and likely wouldn't invest in a social media site (esp one I hadn't tested/had a good experience on yet.)

Thank you for chiming in! You raise a lot of good questions and i hope others will take some time and read your points and comment if they feel so inclined :)