I’ve included my interview below, but you can also read it and join the conversation on the NetSquared blog. The other interviews include Sylwia Presley from Gobal Voices, and Claire Sale from NetSquared. I definitely recommend them both!

Q: What does “online” add to the community organizing?

Successful community organizing across history has always been networked. It may have been a network of organizers in various towns or locations coordinating with each other and then operating locally. Or a team of volunteers that manage communications (from phone trees to canvassing). Or even the networked influence from news coverage and stories from one group or city to the next.

When you bring the Internet, online social tools, mobile technologies, and all the rest into the equation, you do not fundamentally change how communities organize or make change. You do, though, change the scale and the opportunity. Online networking means communities can form that aren’t based in the same physical place. It means community organizers and leaders can communicate with their communities and with other leaders asynchronously. It even means that individuals and groups who thought they “were the only ones” before, are now able to find each other, work together, and do even more.

In the most basic sense, online organizing gives figurative legs to impact and reach.

Q: What makes a community?

To me, a community is a group of people (even if it is organizations, it is still the people within them) who have opted in to participate. It may be a community of geography, cause, or topic. But the opt-in is essential. Simply because I live in a given city, does not mean that I am participating in organized decision making, meeting and collaborating with my neighbors, or even communicating with those around me. Similarly, because I am a certain age, have a certain allergy, favor a specific political party, or even care about a certain social issue, I do not automatically belong to a community with a shared experience. I find that community (today, most likely online) and opt in.

Q: How do you combine working on the ground with online organizing?

We should approach offline action as one of many channels available to us to reach our mission. Many organizations and groups currently consider multi-channel approaches for a message to include email, website, social media, and blogs. We should expand that view and definition of multi-channel to include offline action and mobile messaging/text. If we put out a call to action and want to organize our community to not just respond but share and distribute the call, we need to think both about where we send the message, but also how the action can be completed. For many organizations and groups, the offline actions are most critical and yet most often forgotten.

Q: What are the current trends in the online community organizing? What is changing and why?

The biggest shift with cause-specific organizing is that organizations don’t necessarily need to be involved. This can be great, or it can be scary. With campaigning tools readily available, and the economy of the web centered on content and adoption, if passionate individuals work together to create compelling content, achievable and measurable goals, and clear calls to action, they can make an impact – from fundraising to policy change – without an organization being involved. Note, though, that those same steps to success are true for an organization. Basically, online organizing tools have leveled the playing field between for-profit and nonprofit groups, as well as between organizations and communities.

Q: Any advice you’d like to share with the other online community organizers?

Start small. Don’t be afraid of failing. And invite people to lead with you at every stage.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas, questions, and feedback!

(Photo credit: Flickr jakubsteiner)

Background:

CTX services over 8,000 charity and community organizations in the UK and wants to nurture that network of organizations by providing more than just software and services, but also opportunities to build community.

Key Questions:

The session was designed to be a conversation – with an avid note taker (me). For many organizations with a small number of staff, it’s a luxury to have time to sit, talk, and think aloud together. I wanted this session to be a chance to relax, think big and critically, and pull out ideas from everyone. I came with a list of questions that I used to steer the conversation to ensure not only were we focused, but also that each question pushed us closer to our goal of identifying opportunities for community-focused programs or services.

1. Who is the community? This conversation should naturally define segments or groups, as well as the attributes that define those members.
2. What services already exist? This is both locally and globally. Ideally, the conversation with map the various services to the segments or groups who already/could benefit.
3. What’s the sweet spot? The sweet spot is the middle or cross section between what you (the organization) want to do and what the community (or member organizations) want to do. The overlap is the area where you should focus your capacity.
4. What capacity/resources are in place? This means everything from physical resources to knowledge and staff to the entire network.  Reinventing the wheel is usually not a very successful option.
5. What roles or resources are needed? Now that we have talked about who the community is and what it wants, as well as our goals and current resources, we have probably also identified opportunities for engagement – it may be ideas for specific groups or the whole network and it may be supporting an effort another group is already spearheading or starting something new. Whatever it is, we need to identify the people/roles and resources needed to make it successful.
6. Next steps. Phew – after a long conversation and work session like this, it was exiting to talk next steps!

So how did it really go? Here’s a brief recap:

Who is the community?

We had a very valuable conversation about members of the different parts of the CTX community, and the segments that emerged included readers/consumers, activists, donor partners, participants/contributors, and others. One important note was that all groups include organizational staff and “free agents” which means there are various motivations and perspectives in every group.

Part of our conversation about who the community was and how it was broken down into groups also included some dedicated brain time about some of the words we were using. We created a separate area of the white board where we could collect words we used in conversation that were actually indicitative of much more – words that were clues to what CTX wanted in a community space, attributes of a “terms of service” type agreement for a community, and words that even would later become keys to identifying the next steps and appropriate technology options. These words included things like: open, mutuality, learning, not “techie,” not about CTX, knowledge sharing and storytelling (and more).

What already exists?

When it comes to the kind of community engagement and knowledge sharing that CTX wants to catalyze, looking at the field of what exists covers some dynamic ground. For example, there are others creating or sharing content specifically about tech, like ComputerWorld, UKRiders and CharityWebForum. There are organizations creating content like NAVCA, NCVO, LASA with the Knowledgebase, and KnowHow NonProfit. There’s also non-branded content (non-nonprofit or non-tech) as well as non-UK specific groups and resources. As CTX operates through partnerships with donor partners, all those donors have their own resources and content about tools and services.  Lastly, there are lots of 1-time or regular events that surface ideas and case studies and generate content that could be really useful to pull in or capture.

But what is missing from everything that exists? In CTX’s eyes it is the engagement, aggregation, or the weaving of people and ideas, questions and answers. That’s the key.

What’s the sweet spot?

The sweet spot is the place where what your community wants and what you want overlap. In the case of CTX, the sweet spot had key words like:

• open
• connecting people in a way that recognizes/respects many hats and real context
• aggregating conversations in a way that lets CTX and users analyze the data (know you’re not the only one asking a question, measure interest in ideas, etc.)
• peer to peer
• positively incorporates promotion and visibility
• questions answered
• storytelling, not tech forum q/a but explanation of why and how
• rich content that’s unique
• inspirational and empowering both in knowledge and engagement

What’s in place now?

There’s a drupal/civicrm system in place and a community space that was a beta trial (that is closing down), plus knowledge/experience on the team of using tools like facebook, twitter and wiki platforms. Relationships with most all of the groups listed in “what already exists” which is huge. Essential to success is the fact that there is about .5 FTE in place already with the potential to have interns or other contractors already in place dedicate time.

An important realization that emerged from the conversation, though, was that something in place now is a work flow and organizational culture that doesn’t match where they want to be. This lead directly to the last question:

What’s needed?

The CTX team members in the meeting asked some great questions about the way others have created community spaces before and what helped them be successful. The cultural shift that they see necessary for their situation is one that puts the community space (whatever form it takes) into the work flow of staff – for example when staff field questions from organizations who received a particular donation, they could post the question and the answer or resource in a public place.

Experience and knowledge about best practices and how to successfully build community was something the CTX team felt was obvious but not something they had. This lead into a conversation about choosing tools and guiding creation of a space – is that something they decide or do they find a community builder and leave them to the decisions? A similar chicken-or-the-egg conundrum was the conflict of creating one central space vs creating a presence across the social web, where a community builder would concentrate on pulling people in vs pulling together content across the network respectively.  Is aggregation the goal and thus the desire to pull content together into one place or is action the key and getting people talking wherever they are?

Next steps

Everyone loves next steps – it’s my favorite part of any meeting! Part of the next steps are writing up these thoughts and notes to we can continue to think and talk about it. We are also going to explore a few options including The Groupery, Wagn (in use like connectipedia), and others.

I’ll be sure to keep you posted as things develop!

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I really hope that sharing these notes is helpful for anyone else looking to explore options and strategic planning for community-focused programs or products. Let me know if it is, and what you’re working on – or why it isn’t and what you’ve found that works better!

My current job title includes the term “Community Builder” and I get asked nearly every day just what that means: how do you build community? where is the community you want to build? how can I be a community builder online? Tips, secrets, ideas?!  I want to take a break from all the hard work building community (does that get a wink?) to share some of what I believe is the core of successful community building (on or offline).

“Community building” is about a lot of things.  Some people define it as organizing, especially around specific events, campaigns, legislation, or fundraising.  Others see it as specifically applying to online community spaces, like a social networking site.  I believe that community exists everywhere, really.  That the Internet is a huge community of people looking to connect with others like them to form smaller, more specific communities.  Those of us in positions to support those connections and collaborations are some of the luckiest people in the global network, acting as the email or Twitter post or blog reference that helps individuals make networked jumps to where they really want to be.

Gardening vs Landscaping

So, what’s the secret to successful community building? You guessed it: be a great gardener and avoid the temptation to landscape.  Here’s what that means:

• A gardener only takes out the weeds; a landscaper takes out everything that isn’t part of the design.  Think about the number of beautiful plants or trees that have sprung up in parks, your yard, or even out in nature that weren’t “intended” to be there but quickly grew to be a valuable part of the ecosystem.
• A gardener isn’t afraid to mix things around; a landscaper plans and plots and plants.  Sometimes you can’t know ahead of time just which plants will respond well or want more sun or shade so you need to be flexible.
• When a storm hits, a gardener can remain open to planting anew and rejuvenating others; a landscaper may just order more of the same.  Sometimes it takes a storm to realize which plants just weren’t going to make it or which were able to stick it out.
• When in doubt, a gardener will try more plants or kinds of plants and see which take root; a landscaper may default to less.  What about the plants you had never used before to know about and how they took root, flowered, and bolted up right before your eyes?

Clearly, this is all very metaphorical here with the back yard options.  It is, though, meant to paint a picture:

The Gardener creates an ecosystem open to change, available to new groups, and full of fresh opportunities to emerge naturally.  The approach is focused on organic collaboration and growth for the entire community.  The gardener is simply there to help, cultivate, and clear the weeds if/when they poke up.

The Landscaper creates an ecosystem that matches a preconceived design or pattern.  The approach is focused on executing a preconceived environment, regardless of how natural or organic it may be for the larger area.  The landscaper is there to ensure that everything stays just as planned.

Your Community

How can you apply these ideas to your community building? The first question I always ask myself when considering a new tool or functionality online, a new project or campaign, or even new partnerships or members is: “Is this something the Community wants or something I want?” It doesn’t matter what I want, really.  It matters what the Community wants.  And how do you know if or what they are interested in? ASK!  Be sure to always provide opportunities for your community members or those who come across your work to share their ideas about what they would like to see, how they’d like to connect with each other and how they would like to work with you.  And when considering anything new, ask for feedback and share your ideas and plans ahead of time.  You may be surprised, but your Community often has even better ideas than you!

What do you think? Do you have other ideas about successful community building? Have a great example or case study you want to share?  Looking forward to more!

You can read the full post and join the conversation on SSIR here.

Twitter is a service for people to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of short (140 character) messages. This micro-blogging tool has seen growing use over the last two years from individuals, activists, organizations and even news companies. (Click here for the Common Craft video on Twitter.)

Tu Diabetes is a great example of a group using Twitter to engage with communities online.  Tu Diabetes is an online community where members help each other out, educate themslves and share the steps taken every day to stay healthy while living with this very serious condition. Tu Diabetes employs a gamut of web tools in its process of reaching out to new community members, keeping the community informed, and educating the public.

I recently spoke with Manny Hernandez, Tu Diabetes community founder, to take a closer look at Tu Diabetes’ Twitter story.

I asked Manny if Tu Diabetes has a policy or strategy for building the followers/following lists.  He explained that, “every week or two, we do a search for the term “diabetes” on Twitter and selectively add certain people. We avoid adding people who are clearly using Twitter for SPAM or strictly commercial purposes. The Twitter search only looks in the people’s profiles, so we go a step further and use TweetScan to do a search in tweets containing the term “diabetes”. Then again, many of them are SPAM but a good number of them are legit and are made by people who could potentially be interested in what our community has to offer. We add those folks to our list of followed people. When you take a look at the product of our “adds” you see a very diabetes-centric timeline, which makes for a very interesting and inspiring reference. Also, we typically see people we add on Twitter joining the community. When people get a chance to see that you are for real, that the community is offering valuable information and support, people take the extra step and join. I don’t think this is something that works this way outside of nonprofit, but it is a model that I highly recommend for non-profits to try.”

I also asked what the specific strategy is for posting content via Twitter. Manny explained that, they “use Twitterfeed to automate the posting of a few of the RSS feeds that TuDiabetes has: forum topics, blog posts, etc. Depending on their volume we have Twitterrific posts to our Twitter account periodically (typically a few times per day) with relevant content (all our content is centered around diabetes). We also post manually periodically, every time there is a relevant topic or announcement that we want to make sure appears in our Twitter timeline.”

Twitter is a great avenue for cultivating and igniting conversations as well as getting your information out. I asked Manny if they had been part of some conversations within Twitter, and not just their online community space, and he confirmed that “occasionally other Twitter users contact us with questions. We’ve had a few media people contact us through Twitter too.”

I think Manny really nailed a great idea for organizations or online communities looking to explore Twitter’s use: “When people get a chance to see that you are for real, that the community is offering valuable information and support, people take the extra step and join. I don’t think this is something that works this way outside of nonprofit, but it is a model that I highly recommend for non-profits to try.”

Twitter, and other micro-blogging tools like Identi.ca and others, is another way organizations can be more open, transparent, and available in real-time to answer questions, provide information, and keep the community informed about both the work being done and ways to get involved. Here are some other organizational Twitter accounts you may want to check out:

• Nonprofits Assistance Fund – http://twitter.com/NAFund
• The Women’s Museum – http://twitter.com/TheWomensMuseum
• St. Jude Children’s Reasearch Hosptial – http://twitter.com/StJude
• Mara Triangle – http://twitter.com/maratriangle
• OneNW – http://twitter.com/onenw

Is your organization using Twitter, or are any of your staff members using it? What questions do you have for organizations adopting micro-blogging tools like Twitter?