How to Engage Members in Organizations

In 2020, we launched our first paid online community, SPI Pro, with 500 founding members...and we made some mistakes. You see, community building is a different game from audience building. It's not a one-to-many broadcast; it’s creating a safe space where many-to-many conversations thrive. In "Lean Learning" fashion, we learned from our mistakes while diving head first into this world, and we were able to find solutions to the tough challenges we faced. Here are 3 mistakes and how we solved for them: 1️⃣ Overwhelm Happens Fast We had tons of resources and events lined up – but quickly realized people felt overwhelmed and stretched too thin. Members felt they had to "do it all" to get value. The fix? 👉 We revamped our onboarding to guide members on how to find their pockets of value without feeling like they need to engage with everything. Now, we teach members to embrace what serves them and let the rest go. 2️⃣ Don’t Underestimate Time Zones Our events were originally one-off, live-only sessions. Turns out, that doesn’t work when you’re serving a global community! We adapted by: 👉Hosting multiple sessions for key events to cover more timezones. 👉For our Ask Me Anything events, we converted a 1-hour live event to a 24-hour asynchronous thread to allow for anyone at anytime to get a "real time" answer – with the expectation that answers would, at the latest, come in by the end of the day. 👉Offering recordings so members can learn on their own time, and positioning live events as valuable content that will remain in the community, and if you happen to be able to make it live, that's a bonus. 3️⃣ Engagement Needs a Nudge We assumed engagement would happen naturally after careful planning, and proper onboarding. Spoiler: It doesn’t! We had to get intentional about connection. Our solutions? 👉Tagging members in responses to jump-start replies 👉Launching a mastermind matching program 👉Co-creating with members to build spaces and resources they truly want Community building takes effort, iteration, and a strong focus on human connection. But the payoff has been incredible. When I get a chance to meet members in person (which we hope to facilitate even more in the near future), hearing their stories brings it all full circle – and reminds me why community is worth every tweak and adjustment. 💬 Have any community-building questions? Drop them below – I’d love to help!

Community engagement strategies are often overcomplicated. Here are 3 insights I've gained through my work with Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess County and Consensus Building Institute on the Mid-Hudson Regional Clean Energy Hub. 💡 Connection with the target community is THE most important aspect of outreach and engagement. Too many people have negative associations with governments and NGOs, and for good reason. There's a history in the social impact space of paternalism and negligence. In order to begin rebuilding relationships, show up with honesty and a genuine desire to learn before making recommendations, asking for time/energy, and designing initiatives. Real recognizes real. 💡 Meet people where they are. In a similar vein to above, attempting to drive people toward one action, meeting, or goal, without building a rapport is a waste of time, energy, and resources. Once you have an understanding and relationship with the community you want to serve, you have a better understanding of how to get their input. This involves actually BEING in the community. If people know you from the bodega, church, or the grocery store, or from roasting that cringey Ice Spice Dunkin Donuts commercial (see photo below) they're more likely to hear what you have to say and respond with authenticity. 💡 Offer a tangible, immediate benefit. The social-impact space can be alarmingly extractive. Be conscious of the power differential in your initiatives and proactively mitigate this by compensating all participants. Provide childcare, dinner, a gift card - something! Folks working in this space often forget that the daily issues marginalized communities face take higher priority than completing a survey. Actively anticipate this and find ways to make engagement attractive. 🗣 Social impact professionals, I want to hear your thoughts! What insights, tips, or practices have worked in your community engagement initiatives? Share below in the comments! ---- 💌 I'm back from a short LI hiatus and gearing up for my monthly #opendoorclimate group call this Saturday, 6/1, at 2p EST. If you'd like to learn more about my journey or find out more about what it means to work in climate, sustainability, and energy, send me a DM with the word #opendoorclimate and I'll forward the registration link!

💕 Talk about feeling the ERG love. Yesterday, we were talking Maximizing ERG Engagement with Match Group, Hinge and Tinder. Some pointers: 🧩 Think about your ERG Engagement puzzle as a whole: Too often we hear ERGs indexing on heritage and awareness months & observances as the entire picture of ERG Engagement. While we love these point-in-time efforts, ERG engagement goes beyond this. Engagement happens asynchronously in our chat channels. It happens in our meetings. It happens in long-term relationships we build with allies and executive champions. It happens when we build sustainable ways to solicit feedback. Think of your engagement not just through efforts, but also in the structural elements of your ERG that keep the lights on. 👏🏽 Give yourself some credit: Once you step back and see engagement as a whole, give yourself as an ERG leader some credit for everything that happens to keep your ERG going. Write down your wins and index your challenges. Focus on improving one or two things at a time. Maybe this month you improve your meetings. Maybe you take a quarter to review your membership list. Give yourself time to focus on the baselines so that when you have more bandwidth, you can build on top of a sturdy foundation without burning out. 💬 Ask for help: Work cross-functionally with other ERGs and their Leaders if you want to maximize engagement across your employee population. Not only does this foster intersectionality, but you simply can't do it all alone. For example, ask if another ERG you're working with has someone who's talented at marketing or graphics and tap into their skills if you need something. Time and again we see engagement sky-rocketing if you build cross-functional and cross-group bonds that last over time. When in doubt, listen to your members, tie it back to your purpose & goals and analyze your bandwidth honestly. As always, if you're thinking about ERG strategy, always here to jam and share knowledge. Shoot me a message or comment your ERG Engagement questions below 👇🏽 #employeeresourcegrupos #ergs #employeeexperience #workplaceculture