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Community Language

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A look at how language builds community, can leave people behind and and ways to open up community language.

We moved around a lot when I was a kid. Every new classroom and school meant entering a different community. There were new ways of working. Different rules. Another set of norms and pre-existing relationships to sort out.

Finding a place in the community meant not just meeting people but learning their language: the unwritten ways of being. Of course, for many kids, this process means learning a spoken language. That’s another layer that adds complexity to the inner language.

Everyone has these experiences of joining a community, neighborhood school, workplace and trying to understand how it all works. But communities often don’t consider the complexity and power of their internal language. And people who aren’t able to pick up on the language will feel their exclusion. Some won’t engage. Others leave. The community is lesser for it.

Understanding the role and use of language will help any community or membership group thrive. Language is a currency of community.

Photo of signs painted on the Tijuana border wall by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash.

Investing in language to grow community

Language grows community. Stories of community history, purpose and vision for the future are built of shared words, events and symbols. Community members speak to each other about actions, events, learning and the future. Language allows us to interact, learn, share, and build the tools and institutions that hold community together.

Language is a connective tissue and circulatory system. Like any system, language can put up barriers to entry. It can also decay if it doesn’t learn how to evolve and regrow over timer.

One challenge of community is defining not just language but its access points and capacity for change. A language that doesn’t change can’t thrive. Neither can its community.

Here are some ideas for opening community language to others in a way that grows and strengthens community.

Collective and transparent

Make your common terms, symbols, visuals and history accessible and easy to explore. Create opportunities to learn and ask questions about stories and the language used in them.

Stories and language should also be clear. A community that grows will be one that makes clear what it’s about and what it’s trying to do.

Space for difference

Growth is longer lasting when stories and people are networked together. A member who is connected to one other, or to just one story or campaign, is more likly to leave the community than a member who knows multiple people, participates regularly, and has their questions answered.

This means recognizing that not every member will agree with or engage in every aspect of community. Allow people to bring their questions and differences to the table. Look for events that allow conversation in many forms, not just broadcast messages.

Difference and change are (usually) good for community

A community can restrict difference and disagreement by controlling language. We see this in national or group censorship. Propaganda and misinformation are also used to control language and protect power.

But you can also create and shift stories by opening up language. Think of language and the opportunity to use and learn it as a source of abundance, not a threat.

Some ways to think about language that grows community:

  • Express shared principles, values and processes for engaging in community.
  • Help people build relationships and trust with multiple community members, not a single person or narrative.
  • Show people they have a role in communications and storytelling. Ensure they see themselves represented.
  • Help people participate in language formation. Community town halls, for example, can be forms of language formation. They give us reason to use and engage with community language. They expose members to language use by and with other members.
  • Accessibility. Keep language jargon-free.
    • Focus on language that fits the community, its norms, geography, vocation.
    • Language needs to be seen, heard, read, and used. Use communications platforms and methods that your community uses.
  • Teach. And do. Teaching (courses, webinars, how-tos, guides, etc.) offers the community ways experience language (and the community) to helps them meet their needs. “Doing” is similar. Do Something. Together. Include opportunities for the community to lead, engage and use language in service with others.

Content strategy for community

We hear about community strategy. And content strategy. But not much about the intersection of the two. Content strategy both creates and reflects community and the member experience.

In Building Brand Communities: How Organizations Succed by Creating Belonging, Carrie Jones and Charles Vogl write about two forms of community content: media and shared experiences.

Media includes the platforms and communications products on which content is dispersed and, one hopes, both read/viewed and acted upon.

Shared experiences are the activities and events at which members engage with the community, organization and one another.

Content strategy guides the words, visuals, and stories that appear on media and in/around events. One can have a newsletter or a Facebook page or a weekly meetup. But you also need the stories, content and processes for interacting with and using that content.

Have a content strategy that is for community and meets its needs. Marketing language, e-commerce and fundraising pitches are not, usually, community language.

  • Create content that defines norms, expectations, mission.
  • Understand how and when content informs and teaches community.
  • Provide stories and content that members can use to talk to other members and people outside the community.
  • Use origin stories to provide shared history and case studies to show community working.
  • Events and other gatherings have their own language that members use to understand the event, describe it to others and engage in the event. Make this language accessible, usable and able to be shared.

Folklore and memes

Want to dig deeper? I have some questions and suggestions. It would be interesting to talk about the role of folklore and fables in creating stories, language and ways of behaving. The Stith Thompson Folklore Motif indexes hundreds (thousands?) of common stories and narratives appearing in folk tales. These are the shared stories and language behind community beliefs and norms that weathered centuries of political change. At least in (mostly) Western folk history. Community language and content strategy could learn from a study of these motifs.

Another topic: Memes and viral visual language. What’s the impact of memes and virality on community language? How does visual language and mixed visual/audio/written language impact that growth, stability and sustainability of a community? Social media, including largely visual platforms like TikTok and Instagram, shape and drive language in particular ways that impact community.

Are communities with strong visual language, particularly visuals that travel fast on social media, looser or more cohesive? Do visuals spread knowledge and experience that communities use to bind and network? I don’t know. Visual language is part of community. Perhaps the speed of memes and quickly shared photos/video can grow community. But sustaining community is another layer of language development and use.

Community and mutual aid

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You’re not building community if you’re not building infrastructures for self-healing and sustainable mutual aid.

Like many, I suspect, my holiday week was spent in a COVID daze broken only by periods of coughing, sneezing and trying to sleep. Eventually, late last week, I was considering the idea of cleaning my home office when news popped up of a wildfire that would soon be whipping across neighborhoods 20 miles northwest of us.

I later opened up What’s Better than Charity? by Tressie McMillan Cottom. When in doubt, it’s always a good idea to catch up on Cottom’s writing.

The essay is a masterclass on how mutual aid can be at the center of a community’s daily existence. Not just something to wind up in a crisis.

Cottom writes of a childhood immersed in communities that practiced mutual aid. Giving was a collective act. You gave, helped and taught because you knew you would receive aid, learning and support from others.

My great-grandmother was fond of reminding all of her children and their children of the two rules of giving: Always give better than you would buy for yourself, and never call attention to your giving. It was implied that doing so for others — giving your best and affording people their dignity — would mean that when our time came to be on the receiving end of someone’s giving, they would afford us the same. This reciprocity is what distinguishes mutual aid from other types of giving.

Tressie McMillan Cottom

Last Thursday’s Marshall Fire destroyed nearly 1,000 homes in Louisville and Superior, Colorado. The majority of the damage was done in the 10-12 hours between the fire’s start around 11 am and the winds dying down in the evening.

People woke up that morning with no idea they would soon evacuate and possibly lose their home. Nobody expected the fire. Nobody was prepared.

This is when people turn to their community and government aid for help. If we live in mutual aid communities we can expect aid from others. Just as we would provide it when needed. And it’s working, at least when it comes to fundraising. The Boulder Community Foundation raised over $12 million for its wildfire fund as of January 4.

It’s GoFundMe, though, that seems to be the modern incarnation of mutual aid. At least in disasters and other crisis situations. Probably because it can fill short-term needs. Fund disbursement from a community foundation takes time and nobody knows where the money will go.

My Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of friends sharing GoFundMe pages: families who lost their homes in need of money for clothing, food, shelter. The most basic necessities.

GoFundMe is mutual aid. But its application is mostly individualistic. Someone with the best photo, biggest personal network, good hashtag game or a bit of luck may receive more. GoFund e is powerful, useful and a lifesaver to many. It’s also a reminder that while we live in communities we are essentially alone. Aid is often individualized. We make a pitch. Hope for the best.

How mutual can community be?

What does mutual aid mean to those of us who work in community building and membership? I think it means building community habits, infrastructures and systems grounded in mutual aid. What if we see aid (and support and solidarity) as a first principle? Not as a thing to be extracted or provided at some future date.

A provocation: you’re not building community if you’re not building infrastructures for self-healing and sustainable mutual aid. You may be building a membership list of people who can donate money or goods when needed. But is this a mutually beneficial relationship.

Mutual aid and community: Possibility and problems.

I’m always interested in how we transform the work of “membership” into building stronger communities. Societies have more opportunity and potential when individuals are able to see, act with and feel for the collective benefit. Too often, membership is defined and operated in the context organizational, not community, needs.

Grounding membership and community in mutual aid would be a step forward. A mutual aid driven community would be open to others. It would be more able to self-sustain in times of challenge (disaster) and transition (economic shifts and slow changes like climate change…which are slow until, like a wildfire, they’re very very fast).

A mutual aid perspective doesn’t come without concerns and questions.

  • Exclusivity. Is mutual aid for the community or membership only? Is that defined and exclusive? Are boundaries built on race, gender, class and other definitions that divide rather than grow community?
  • What are the values on which you base community? Who do these values exclude and include? Why and how is that good or bad for the broader community.
  • Will there be a sense of (or actually doing) mission creep. Most organizations and communities don’t have a history or mission of mutual aid. Is what you’re doing a fit? Good for the budget? Fundable?

Some ideas:

  • Build connection before you “need” connection. View mutual aid as ongoing, part of the community culture and DNA. Not something that is cobbled together as needed.
  • Make giving and receiving aid accessible to different people and their needs, personality, location, technology.
  • Serve people and value their needs. Ask the community. Talk with people. Invite them into action and leadership.

Many of the strongest civic and community institutions are (or were) focused on mutual aid. And politics often enters into their work. Or did. Or could. Political parties, unions and churches organize members to support educational, social and even financial needs. An advocacy organization that strives to build, create and sustain community can, perhaps should, embed mutual aid in its programs and values.

The need to lead and teach mutual aid has never been more important.

Other links

Some interesting bits on community and language.

The importance of language in gathering by Erin Mikail Staples. Shared language shapes and sustains community.

Implicit Feudalism: Why Online Communities Still Haven’t Caught Up with My Mother’s Garden Club by Nathan Schneider. The importance of norms, expectations and language to talk about them.

“Not supposed to happen in your 20s”: Grieving young adults find support around virtual dinner tables by Elizabeth Hernandez. The Dinner Party helps people grieve together.

The antidote is always turning deeper towards each other. Anne Helen Petersen’s conversations with Garrett Bucks about community building and white grievance snake oil salesmen.

Cancel culture: Why do people cancel news subscriptions? by Nieman Lab. People are cutting local news subscriptions. But that’s not all. A great look at what people value and pay for when it comes to news. And why they leave.

A 2021 narrative reading list to launch your 2022. A curated look at articles and research on narrative change.

Photo by Tim Dennell via flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Membership architectures to create power

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A conversation with Ben Pollard of London-based Local Welcome about community, resilience and power.

Nonprofits and community groups (and what many around the world call civil society) often hold different views about the purpose and goals of community building. 

Organizations may tackle big problems, provide resources and support others. Think of food banks, shelters and disaster assistance. When successful these communities are changing lives, keeping people healthy and providing homes. 

We need a certain amount of civic courage to do “politics without violence.” Unfortunately, the architecture of our digital communities – Facebook, etc. – is about maximizing polarization instead of civic courage.

Ben Pollard

Another model builds power alongside members. Community offers opportunities for co-creation, collaboration and resilience. Membership, including the monetary support that often comes with it, gives the community power by providing resources, bodies, labor and skill.

Both approaches bring value. The first centers power in the organization. The other expects community members to hold power, create solutions and support one another. 

The pandemic has thrust both models into relief. Weak safety nets have left people dependent on unsafe jobs or just unemployed. 

I recently spoke with Ben Pollard, the founder of Local Welcome, a London-based group that helps communities organize meals that bring together long-time local residents and recent migrants. 

Last year, Local Welcome posted a series of “what we learned” articles. For example, 5 things we’ve learned about leadership and 5 things we’ve learned about being a good partner. These draw out themes that you – or any community-based organization – may apply in your work. 

I planned our latest conversation as an opportunity to hear more about the lessons that helped Local Together respond to the pandemic with what I call a “pivot with community.” In essence, the focus on community leadership and partnership instead of logistics and “meals served” let the team better recognize and solve for community needs. And use its strengths. 

What we ended up talking about, though, was a little bit of community architecture,  membership theory and power practice. 

Three ideas about community surfaced for me this conversation. 

  1. The “why” of community and membership often defaults to self-interest. Especially in our dominant digital community infrastructures.
  2. Group membership is a powerful source of resilience. 
  3. There’s been a decline in membership as a source of power.

This conversation is for you if you’re membership person, community builder, and/or interested in the power dynamics between members, organizations and funders. 

Ben began the conversation reflecting on his approach to community building, leadership and power. We started by surfacing the struggles and lessons of Local Welcome during the pandemic. 

Last year Local Welcome endured a pandemic that made community meals difficult at best and launched Local Together and ADHD Together. 2020 speaks to community resilience. Say a little bit about how you view come to view community and its purpose.

I grew up in diverse church communities. My parents were basically missionaries in North Africa running a church supporting Black African communities who were not safe in 1980s Algeria. This included hiding people in basements, helping them escape and other adventures.

It wasn’t safe and we came back to England. We were in Liverpool after the riots. It was a part of the world hollowed out by neoliberalism and Thatcher. 

I experienced being in a very poor but close-knit community. Eventually I went to boarding school and really grew up in schools from then on. 

I missed the real world and closeness of those communities. A lot of my 20s were spent involved in church communities proactively changing the world. I was campaigning and organizing. It was rewarding but exhausting. These church communities were very intentional in thinking about membership and leadership.

Life, I observed, is fundamentally better during hard times when there is a close-knit community that builds resilience and social capital.

But I burned out. I wanted to remain part of these communities but no longer subscribed to their worldview. I also found I was struggling with undiagnosed ADHD. It was affecting every part of my life, work and relationships. 

I was reframing my understanding of the world at a time when I was missing being in a close community. 

Also worth adding that this was also a time when I was observing my brother’s work in government digital service. He had gone into tech and was working as a Director at the Government Digital Service where he led the GOV.UK team that built a single website for all of UK government. Meanwhile, I was part of a campaign trying to negotiate with the immigration minister. My sense then was that he was having a bigger impact working on the digital side. I learned a lot by watching what he was doing. 

Now I’m assessing all this in the context of the past few years, especially 2020. People are isolated. Our community structures aren’t caring for people. We haven’t really seen community organizing admit or recognize that there’s a crisis of civil society and membership in particular. 

These days, most organizations approach community with a digital-first layer. Or only with a digital layer (especially in the pandemic). That opens up community, doesn’t it? Does that digital layer help?

Design and tech are just part of a bigger problem for civil society. Digital has been framed as a savior. We’re all “citizens in the Internet age,” after all. 

But we need civil society to go on a more important journey. People storming the Capitol makes me think of people who feel left behind. And sometimes people are left behind. There are a lot of very isolated people out there. 

Many people have lost jobs and a sense of place in the world. They aren’t members of anything any longer. I’m thinking of the book Alienated America. [Timothy P. Carney, 2019] The genie is out of the bottle. We need to remember how to do the things that were responses to first industrial revolution: settlement houses, work of the Quakers…but do those again with technology. Great examples in history that we’ve forgotten and need translation for today.

Tech isn’t the problem but it has been captured by political elites and financial institutions. 

Have community organizations to become less welcoming to progressive worldviews that may support these “service to others” programs? I’m thinking of churches mostly here, I guess, but also unions and other community groups. 

I don’t think this is a problem of evangelical churches. Settlement houses and other work at the beginning of the labor movement came about through associations, labor and churches. 

There’s a feedback loop: You’re not a member of anything so you have fewer opportunities to observe others or practice civic rituals. You lose familiarity with what Bernard Crick called “politics as the negotiation of difference without violence.”

We need a certain amount of civic courage to do “politics without violence.” Unfortunately, the architecture of our digital communities – Facebook, etc. – is about maximizing polarization instead of civic courage. 

We spoke a few months ago about steps to build and sustain community. You said:  

Rituals are ways of gathering people to tell their stories. 

I highlighted and circled that — and keep coming back to it. Stories, and sharing them, are a kind of bridging ritual. What have you learned about community ritual in transitioning your work from in person to virtual? What’s consistent? What changed? 

It’s been joyful and surprising to discover how much of the learning about rituals has been translatable to the design of our online ADHD groups. These online gatherings can feel like an old-fashioned house meeting. I’ve also been surprised at how powerful a well-designed ritual can be online. 

People are hungry for the safety of structure. They’re exhausted by the constant flow of time during the pandemic. We don’t have milestones.

We’ve been thinking and talking about ritual for a few years at Local Welcome. We’re designing how people interact because we want to create conditions for well-being, belonging and civic literacy. Bringing people together is just an important step towards the bigger goal: the capacity to do politics. That is the power to do good.

Rituals have been a powerful way of approaching that vision. At its best, ritual reinforces a shared story. When we’re hungry for security we don’t know what story to believe so finding a story that’s shared and makes sense of the world is powerful. 

Organizations and systems also have rituals. How we interact with government is all about ritual. And there are shared stories about it. Similar with organizations. Think about how rituals and their stories reflect who has power. 

I’ve also been thinking about the rituals of growing up, becoming an adult and seeing the big complex world. Rituals can help us grow up. Or they can give us shared permission to not grow up. And it can be dangerous when childish communities learn to do ritual. 

Membership, Ritual and Power

Talking to Ben in the wake of the January 6th insurrection, I’m left wondering about QAnon, the American far-right (including militias and now much of GOP,) and the power of digital community architecture to create childish and exclusionary rituals that create a veneer of community and socialization.

These are all examples of rituals that make us feel like we’re part of community: joining a Facebook group or Parler, adding a Q symbol to a Twitter bio, copy/pasting an extreme post. They’re thoughtless, even childish, rituals. But potentially powerful: there was an insurrection on January 6th. 

Three ideas about community surfaced for me this conversation. People working in and with civil society, nonprofits, community building and even civic tech may recognize some of these issues. 

First, the “why” of community and membership often defaults to organizational self-interest. The digital layer of community isn’t helping. We often point to professionalization, high salaries and the “non-profit industrial complex” as reasons why organizations use membership to serve themselves instead of the broader community. But modern community architecture, especially online and when mediated by social networks, isn’t optimized for community. 

Second, group membership is a powerful source of resilience. Modern community models use technology to build lists of people and scale community size but they optimize for individualism instead of interdependency. Instead of resilience and support we get self-help. 

Finally, there’s been a decline in membership as a source of power. A growing reliance on foundations and philanthropy disincentivizes membership. Churches and unions needed members to build community and serve others. But they also used membership payments to build infrastructure, provide resources to members and develop leaders. A digital world blurs community and membership. Anyone and everyone can belong. Anyone can leave. Maybe you pay. Maybe you don’t. Organizations learn not to rely on members and people aren’t invested in being a member. 

Links for your spare time. What is time, really?

The best newsletter about newsletters ever. Wow…have you seen the Trump’s fascist propaganda film from January 6?! Fish to humans: BE QUIET. 15 years after its founding, Twitter looks for revenue. Twitter is also opening its archives to researchers. Here’s how to have better conversations with the voice in your head. Maybe there’s an inverse relationship between use of blackletter fonts and the general health of society. The success of “watch me clean” videos also says something not so good about the collective. The pandemic has crushed casual friendships (I feel this, do you?).

Five questions to ask about membership

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Why do people say they belong to a community?

What are some fundamental books and essays on community? I’d love to hear your suggestions. I’ve been reading and revisiting them, looking for common lessons on how groups and communities thrive. More importantly, we’re looking at how a sense of belonging deepens and spreads across networks.

Think for a minute about why people join, stick with or leave a community. What takes us from curious to membership to a deeper sense of belonging and commitment?

I’ve been going to the same yoga studio five or six days a week for ten years. My calendar says I last took a class there on Sunday, March 8th, 2020. I went for the classes, sure, but it was a community – familiar faces, friendly people, and a regular set of events and expectations.

As COVID settled in, the studio closed for a couple months before reopening. Going back didn’t feel safe (which may or may not be the case but I have plenty of reasons to minimize COVID exposure). They offered access to recorded classes. They were ok but there’s something a little depressing (or comical, if you like) about strangers running through yoga poses in a sterile room in a nameless building in a nameless city. A workout, sure, but certainly no sense of community.

Then I heard that someone who used to teach at the local studio would be streaming live classes over zoom. I actually know several who are doing this. What I got were familiar if sometimes rough around the edges sessions. There was some banter and conversation. Other people in the zoom window. There’s some sense of connection and community.

Why community?

In The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, Priya Parker notes that we tend to focus on the mechanics of gathering. The when and where. The agenda. The food and drink. Who says what and when.

But the heart of a successful gathering (and a community is, in some sense, an ongoing cascade of gatherings) is knowing why you’re really gathering. Why do people come to your gathering? Why do they come back? If it’s a book club it’s probably not just about the book. If it’s a yoga class (and, yes, a recorded yoga class is as much a gathering as a live class) it’s about more than the sequence of poses.

The question of why a community exists (or why you should put in the work of joining, starting or sticking with one) comes up in every book on community.

Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh and Kai Elmer Sotto run People and Company. In 2019 they published the wonderful Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People. They push community leaders to answer the why are we coming together question. Ways of looking at the question, they write, include:

  • What do people need more of?
  • What change do we desire?
  • What problem can we solve together?

The why is something to be done, learned, found, explored together. It’s not process (meet at 9, check in, report back, etc.). It’s people.

In The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging, Charles Vogl defines community as: A group of people who share a mutual concern for one another’s welfare. That doesn’t tell you that figuring out the why of your community is essential. But it tells me that the why of a successful community is almost always (in Vogl’s exerperience and observation) going to involve others, not just ourselves.

You’re engaging with, learning from and working with others in most any successful community group, organization or brand. The progress or success of others is connected to yours. That could be complicated and long term (AA, Weight Watchers, a union or advocacy group) or simple (a book or running club that shares companionship, conversation, or ways to stay in shape every couple weeks).

Membership is about others, not a process

Most of the communities described above (and mentioned in these books as examples of communities with a clear why) are membership groups. They use the concepts and language of membership. You give something to join, the community gives to you, and you belong.

But membership groups, like all communities, need to define and continually revisit their “why.” Especially in the context of togetherness. With whom are we doing this? What are we doing together? And, of course, why?

Too many membership organizations lose the why and focus on the mechanics. The process. They may have a sharp marketing or advocacy campaign. Perhaps good approach to Facebook ad targeting. But we’ve all ended up in relationships or jobs that flamed out. They seemed like a match but soon it was all about showing up and checking the boxes. We forget why we’re there and who we’re there for. That happens to members, too.

So, thinking about the why (and not the what or when or how) of membership in a community sparks a few questions:

  1. Why do people really join your community? (and have you asked any of them this question?)
  2. Why are people coming back?
  3. Why does a member tell someone else about the community?
  4. Why does a member value and support other members?
  5. Why does the community (and your organization) need and want members?
An orange starburst image.

Things we’re reading as adults move into the White House

How we pulled apart and how we can ‘come together’ again. Polling and research from the RSA shows a greater interest in public collaboration, working together and community building than one sees in the media, on social networks. Anthony Painter also reflects on how community engagement is referred to in The Upswing, a recent book by Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett.

Senator Ben Sasse wanders can’t help but “both sides” an argument with a few cherry picked tweets. But his QAnon is Destroying the GOP from Within essay in The Atlantic focuses on how the pervasive lack of meaning within growing complexity and inequality. And, unlike political campaigns that just seek to turn search for belonging into a vote, QAnon, Trump and today’s GOP has operationalized confusion and search for meaning as organized hostility towards (waves hands) pretty much everything.

Trolling for Truth on Social Media. Joan Donovan, Scientific American.
For anyone who still cares deeply about the truth and people’s access to it, fighting back involves dispatching with the ideology that technological platforms are democracy in action. They have shifted from connecting people to people to connecting people to information, tilting power toward those groups that have the most resources. They are also fundamentally businesses that have scaled without a plan for mitigating the harmful effects they have on society.

The Story is a Forest: How to Talk About Climate Change
..the largest challenge climate communicators face today: How can we motivate people using words they connect with while also challenging the status quo?—?that is, the extractivism, competition and consumerism driving climate change?

52 things I learned in 2020. Tom Whitwell, Fluxx Studio

Forget “Building Back Better” — Technology Needs to Be Built Differently. Bianca Wylie explores the connection between weak government tech skills and research capacity and the control tech companies (gig companies like Uber and DoorDash, for instance) have over broader labor policy.

Decades of outsourcing technology policy work (and its attendant risks) to consulting firms is a hard habit to break. This outsourcing has also left operational capacity of the state severely depleted.

How Trees Made Us Human by Daniel Immerwahr is a fascinating look at how wood, or rather the once endless forests of America, shaped American expansion, cities and narrative of individualism and possibility.

Bright Ideas: O Facebook What Art Thou?

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Here’s the latest edition of Bright Ideas where we take a look at changing Facebook relevance may mean to content, storytelling and marketing. Also, why is BuzzFeed doing tote bags? And new jobs for great people. Subscribe here:

Bright Ideas is a biweekly(ish) newsletter sharing ideas and updates on content strategy and storytelling for advocacy and social good.

O Facebook, What Art Thou? I’m not going to make the case that Facebook is going away. At least not anytime soon. But the obstacles it faces, largely challenges of its own making, should be of enormous concern to any nonprofit campaigner, fundraiser or leader. (And present exciting opportunities for positive change, I hope.)

First, let’s look at how anti-user Facebook’s core product, the ad manager (ha, I mean the news feed), has become. Despite Facebook’s self-proclaimed return to being a place for friends in 2018, it’s pretty much a visual (and targeted) classified ads platform. Example: at 4 pm last Wednesday I pulled up my Facebook feed and scrolled through the first 25 posts. Twelve were from pages I’ve followed at one time or another. Five were ads. Eight were from people I know. Five of those were straight up reshares of page content with no context.

So much for friends.

Second, the world that analyzes these things is full of stories about declining Facebook use among people under 25 and Europeans, among others. This parallels data about falling interest in the US. Meanwhile, Facebook does seem to have followed through on its promise to deprioritize news by sending less traffic to media sites – a hit to online publishers that’s unlikely, in the short term, to do anything about public trust in media.

Where does that leave us? In the short term, probably in the same place we’ve been for a couple years now. Facebook is huge and any organization willing to put real resources behind the creation and advertising of engaging content that can help bring people (and their data) to Facebook is going to be okay.

But can nonprofits as well as media orgs (including nonprofit journalism) continue to rely on social media to drive growth and visits to their websites? And can nonprofits (and even the consultants surrounding them) continue relying on a platform that seems okay absolving itself of political, social and human collateral damage?

Hey, I’m on Facebook. It’s complicated. But somehow I think we need to aim for more human-scale relationship building that don’t outsource targeting of lookalike audiences to an unregulated corporation.

That means, I think, more tools people can use to create news and fewer platforms for sharing news. More members and fewer audiences. More teaching people to tell stories and less talking about storytelling.

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Can tote bags save journalism?

Just say no to Trumpian Drift. How advocates, journalists, leaders tell stories of migrants and refugees says a lot about how society views citizenship and basic human rights. Masha Gessen urges journalists to choose their words and stories with more care because the scale of problems facing us requires smarter – and more scaled – reporting. She points this out in the quote below and it’s important for advocates to be aware of this, hold media to account, and to also be very conscious of how every story is framed in their own communications:

“Like most coverage, but perhaps more than most coverage, the writing about immigration has been suffering from what I think of as Trumpian drift. Journalists casually use terms like crossing the border illegally when referring to asylum seekers—when in fact there is no law that says they must use the ports of entry. Journalists increasingly buy into the framing of immigration policy as a strategy for preventing people from entering the United States. And then there is the conspicuous use of the words caravan and migrant to refer to people fleeing for safety.
– Masha Gessen

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Adding value by adding values. This is a headline I can get behind because I see nonprofits, unintentionally in most cases, making pitches for financial support and action that reflect the righteousness of their work as though it’s assumed every member or reader had a hand in creating their theory of change. Ben Terrett writes about how successful product design does a great job solving user problems but often shows no regard for public values (using the apropos and timely example of scooters littering most major cities).

Nonprofits and civil society are – or should be – modeling inclusive behavior that helps all consider the impact our work has on the whole community: the powerless, not just members, wealthy donors or the loudest voices. Thanks to Paul de Gregorio for sharing this one.

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The constant pressure of tracking everything is burning out journalists. And I know that many activists and campaigners feel the same way as reporters John Crowley spoke to for this piece at Nieman Lab. A few things: (1) Stop reporting on Trump’s tweets. They exist only to overwhelm media bandwidth and make everything about him. (2) We hear a lot about tech solutions to info overload, turning off notifications, and self-care. All good (phone notifications are truly evil). But, as Crowley points out, much of this is driven by management and leaders who support systems that place professional and personal value on constant work.

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Does climate fiction lead to climate action? Only if readers are also accessing cultural messages that effective action is possible. Researcher Matthew Schneider-Mayerson surveyed US readers of 19 works “cli-fi” to understand how climate storytelling may help shape advocacy and opinions on climate change.

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So…who actually does what in high-performing digital comms team? Every organization is churning out content. Very few are well-staffed for it. The good folks at Contentius put together this smart field guide to content roles.

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Get your BuzzFeed tote bag now. It’s free when you make your $100 membership payment. Pretty cynical tone to this piece by Christine Schmidt for NiemanLab but it seems meaningful that a private media company with a household name is scrambling to try every membership experiment it can. Curious how membership as a BuzzWord hooks on here but I’m rooting for the great writers there.

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This great little piece from Transparency International shares five ways to help people engage in campaigns. It’s insights that go beyond anti-corruption activism to support most any issue and the communications around it. All orgs could benefit from a user-centered focus on accessibility, safety, relevance, credibility and responsiveness.

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Anyone going to (or involved in) the #Reframe Conference on Mental Health and the Media? Looks interesting!

Do good work

A few great roles at the intersection of digital, content, creative and campaigning. Have one to share? Click reply and let me know. Have an idea of your next perfect role but not finding it? Send me a note.

  • Chicago-based Hearken helps newsrooms listen to and engage the public on the way to building public trust and stronger stories. They’re hiring US-based engagement consultants to work with their 150 (and growing) clients. Engagement consultants should have newsroom experience but, as the description says, “please don’t be discouraged if your title doesn’t include engagement-related words.”
  • Free Press has several campaigning/organizing roles open: Campaign Manager, Online Community Manager and Digital Manager. Free Press is leading the fight for net neutrality in the US by, in part, engaging tens of thousands of volunteer activists. The team is based in western Massachusetts, Washington, DC, and remote locations around the US.
  • New Citizenship Project is doing smart work helping orgs and campaigns engage people in more meaningful and powerful ways. The London-based group is bringing on a Strategist. Check it out if you’re over that way.
  • United for Iran is hiring a Civic Technology Program Director based in Berkeley. Great group and should be a wonderful opportunity to do innovative work. Note: must be fluent in Farsi.
  • I don’t know much about Communitas America but this Program Manager role that will run coworking and a social venture accelerator looks super interesting. Based in the Bronx.
  • Greenpeace is filling two Media and Digital Analyst roles to guide the global organization’s tracking and learning from social media, news, and all the other bits that fly around the internets. Flexible location.
  • The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is hiring a DC-based Digital Director.
  • Campaign Legal Center in Washington, DC, is hiring a Multimedia Strategist.
  • The BlueGreen Alliance is hiring a Denver-based Colorado State Coordinator to grow and run the Alliance’s work there.

Here’s a google spreadsheet full of job lists, email groups and online job boards where you’ll find roles like these posted. It’s editable (for now) so feel free to comment or add a resource.

What’s on your “you should read this” list?

Here’s a short version of mine. Read either of these? Have anything to add? Hit reply and share what you’re digging into (or at least hoping to with any theoretical extra time).

Addendum

Question? Idea to share? Let’s talk. Reply or email [email protected]

Don’t hesitate to forward this to others or pass along the subscribe page link.

Accelerating membership innovation

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Let’s strengthen organizations, raise more money and scale up impact by speeding up how we learn about and position membership programs.

A membership innovation community of practice will identify and speed understanding of what’s working, best practices and innovation across a broad range of communications, engagement, fundraising, and organizing activities in nonprofits, journalism, political campaigns and social-good business.

Don’t want all the background? Jump to project goals and process.

Comments? Feedback? Suggestions? Send an email or contact us.

We believe membership – people joining, investing in, learning from, and acting in partnership with others – is (or could be) a strong framework for scaling deep and sustainable activism and healthier organizations. This brief provides a path towards testing that idea.

Membership is critical to sustaining relevance, revenue and sustainability.

Membership has a long, global history. Groups like the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, National Geographic, Consumers Union and League of Women Voters are membership based.

Labor unions are membership-driven as are cooperatives (local grocery co-ops, for example, and outdoor stores like REI in the United States and MEC in Canada).

Community groups (Rotary Club, garden clubs) and trade associations are also membership based. And millions of people become members associations like the American Association of Retired Persons People every year.

People become members by investing money and time. In many cases, people receive career guidance, networking, volunteer opportunities, discounted products, invitations to events and more.

What is membership? For the purposes of this brief, we view membership as having three parts:

  1. People investing in an organization.
  2. An organization investing in people.
  3. A framework that binds together the interests of people and an organization.

Why do people become members of an organization? The simplest reason: because they’re asked. Usually by people they know. Most members enter an organization with at least one active relationship.

Members receive access to services and benefits for the time, money and personal capital they offer groups. Members are often given opportunities to meet, interact and learn from one another. People also learn and improve skills, take on volunteer roles and eventually become leaders. In many advocacy organizations, membership offers people an opportunity to directly engage with others and the organization in actions around a shared mission or vision for the world.

Let’s assume there is some value (or at least a bit of accuracy) in the above definition of membership, it’s historical presence and why people put their hard-earned money and time into an organization as a member.

It’s worth noting that the public service journalism sector is looking to membership as a path towards revenue growth and sustainability as well as knowledge and service. The Membership Puzzle Project is one example of that sector’s search for stronger member-driven skills and projects.

The Problem

Today, nonprofits (both advocacy and community service groups), associations and journalism/media organizations (nonprofit and for-profit) use a variety of membership models to secure direct and indirect support.

Membership programs are usually built around and optimized for fundraising. People are asked for a minimal amount of time, a $30 donation, a Facebook follow, an email address. They receive a thank you (hopefully). They are passed into the hands of staff running fundraising and advocacy programs.

Membership programs are typically separate from organizing and communications. Software/CRMs may track donations and email opens. But software only does what the people using it ask. Organizations do little to build member relationships (or, in other words, do little to invest in the needs of members). People are either bombarded by messaging in their inboxes and social media feeds. Or receive little at all.

Everyone is concerned about impact. Many people want to work with others to have a direct impact. People in are looking for opportunities to invest not just their money but their time, skills and experience. They’re looking for anchors – places to hook their attention, build relationships, learn more and do good.

Meanwhile, organizations are dealing with solving transactional problems like high membership growth costs and/or churn. Most members would be surprised to learn that the most important calculation of their relationship is acquisition cost and lifetime value. The constant need to replace members creates an endless search for new people, new lists, new audiences – attention taken away from deepening and sustaining membership.

People are looking for consistency and impact are hearing about crises and immediate needs. It gets attention. But we lose attention, tune out, and move on to another crisis.

Worse, people are losing faith in nonprofit organizations. It’s a problem for the causes and communities in which we work who are not consistently served by a committed group of supporters.

Thousands of nonprofit organizations have decades of data about membership programs. Yet, too often, membership teams are sidelined to focus on marginal list growth strategies. Conversations about innovation, sustainability, scale and value TO members get set aside.

We need to rethink what membership can be. We should share lessons, test outside the box, build partnerships across sectors (and inside organizations).

Creating Modern Membership Models

Now is the time to look at new membership models. Membership teams and their partners across the organization, nonprofit and NGO leaders, and even members themselves need new and empowering membership models that can engage and even excite people.

To get there, the sector needs testing and learning, networking and training, and many more opportunities to unleash creativity.

We believe that networks of people working in and around membership programs (everyone from membership teams to organizing, volunteering, fundraising and other roles) will create stronger organizations – and more powerful outcomes – with opportunities and resources to more rapidly learn, test and master membership programming across their organizations, campaigns and teams.

Why Now?

This is a time of declining trust in institutions. And it’s not just government. NGOs, nonprofits and even small organizations face questions from constituents and potential supporters about finances, diversity, leadership, sexual harassment and more. Media and news organizations rely on reader (and source) trust to stay in business.

Membership programs invite and build trust by increasing transparency and direct investment in an organization’s mission, values and operation.

More people than ever are engaging in advocacy and political campaigns as volunteers, activists and leaders. Nonprofit organizations can better learn from organizing campaigns – even those under their own roof – to build stronger membership programs.

Sustainable funding remains critical to the long-term health of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits are raising money and figuring out monthly donor programs but aren’t innovating membership in ways that deepens affiliation to sustain themselves for long time and grow leaders.

Meanwhile, journalism organizations and others are looking towards advocacy and struggling to find/implement membership models and practices.

There is a place for renewed, revitalized and re-imagined membership in nonprofit advocacy and organizations. Some of this work is already happening in public service journalism through the efforts of The Membership Puzzle, the Coral Project, Open News and others. These projects demonstrate the value that testing and networking around membership and engagement bring to communities of practitioners.

We envision a project that advances membership innovation in nonprofits, collaborates with other sectors and ongoing projects to share learning, and makes it possible for far more people to become more sustainably engaged in social good and community change.

Goals of this project

Here’s what we believe this work can accomplish:

Revitalize the membership field so that a wider range of organizations and campaigns can reach more people, engage people more efficiently and sustainably, and promote growth of leadership, revenue and program innovation.

Build a learning community of people working in and around membership. This may include people in nonprofits, NGOs, advocacy groups, political campaigns and social movements, associations, trade groups and labor unions, journalism and community media and more.

Rapidly share data and resources needed to test membership and related programs in fundraising, organizing, mobilization, volunteering and leadership.

Identify and assess a variety of new and existing membership models that organizations, funders, consultants and members can apply, learn from, test and iterate upon.

Create a culture of measurement, testing, reporting, iteration and transparency that supports broader membership program innovation.

Process

What would doing this actually look like? Here’s an idea:

Create a network through baseline research and reporting.
  • Survey a broad cross-section of people involved in members
  • Get direct and subjective feedback on:
    • What is and isn’t working.
    • Identify good, great, creative work and thinking in membership.
  • Bring subset to a kick-off meeting/event/conference where diverse group meets, networks, shares learning, creates plans for next steps in community.
  • Identify what needs to be measured/evaluated for project impact and success.
Continue growing and sustaining a network of membership innovators and leaders.
  • Online/offline community (could range from just email list/facebook group to one or more in person events in different locations)
  • Identify need for and create training materials
Identify and showcase membership innovation and testing in the wild.
  • Membership Innovation Showcase and/or Membership impact guide. Read more.

Inspiration / Background / More Reading

Who’s thinking about this now? We’ll continue updating this list as we find/receive ideas.

Speed up membership innovation

Compact Flash photo via JD Hancock, Flickr. CC 2.0.

What is membership?

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I’m working on a project aimed at assessing (and rethinking?) how diverse communities of people working in nonprofits, associations, journalism and social good approach membership.

The process includes understanding what membership is – and what it isn’t.

Most people working in the field – and members themselves – have a sense of it. But there is no one clear definition of membership.

Organizations use membership in wildly different ways. For some, being on an email list is membership. For others, taking an online action is membership. For others, you pay a minimum amount and earn the right to vote on board members and bylaws. For most, the words member, donor and supporter are used interchangeably during the fundraising process. One can only assume this is in an effort to attract donations from people who find the idea of membership a compelling one.

Does any of this variation matter? Presumably, organizations and their membership teams have tested the terms and know what they’re doing. They know when to use “make a donation” and “become a member” and can clarify for people what the difference, if any, is between being a donor and a member.

I’m not sure the variation matters. But I do believe that vague use of membership invites vague levels of support.

Not defining membership within an organization – and being clear about its goals, requirements, and strategy – sets the stage for fuzzy, unclear and potentially meaningless relationship between people who are supporters and people who work in organizations. And that’s going to weaken the creation and implementation of any program involving people: fundraising, organizing, digital, communications, content, social media, volunteering, board development and more.

So let’s take a leap and write down a definition of membership. My definition certainly isn’t the only one (what’s yours?). And this one is colored by an emphasis on maximizing people power in a modern, digital world.

Three elements of membership

[1] An investment in the organization and its mission by the member.

This could involve money, volunteer time, skill-sharing, advocacy on the organization’s behalf or other resources and services. A strong membership model supports a member who chooses to do more than one of these things and the ability to add or subtract from their investment. A strong membership model also values and optimizes for whatever investment a member is able to contribute.

[2] An investment in the member’s needs by the organization

The organization offers benefits and/or services that the member can use to improve their quality of life. This could be very tangible goods and services (tote bags, books, product discounts). This could be events such as meetings, conferences or even trips. This could be the opportunity to learn a skill or meet people –  these are often direct or indirect benefits of volunteer programs, for example.

It’s worth considering if the “benefit” your organization offers members benefits the person or the organization. Many organizations send supporters a magazine or newsletter. These can include educational and/or entertaining information for the member but are often aimed at helping the organization meet its need for a more informed membership.

Membership
The first mention of membership on a Sierra Club donation/join form comes in the form of small print at the bottom of the form.

[3] A framework that binds together the interests of member and organization

Benefits to the organization and member are the ingredients. A framework that ties people together are the recipe. And, like any cook knows, while there are a thousand ways to cook a chicken, not all of them taste good.

The details can vary but somehow, a strong membership program will create and support ways for members and organizations to better understand and depend on one another.

Shared mission or purpose should be a goal of most any member-organization relationship but it isn’t sufficient or even necessary to a membership relationship.

Historically, many organizations offered members a decision making role in the organization. Members could vote on board members, bylaws and major policy changes. This still happens as many (though likely not all) REI or Sierra Club members know.

Supporters of an organization likely share the mission of that organization. But few supporters can recite a mission statement to you. And, often, people will take action simply because they’re asked and not because they share the mission of the organization.

What membership means

Here’s what membership should not mean:

What membership should NOT feel like

Too often, membership simply means being one of many. A name on a list. Someone who can give money when asked. Sign a petition when asked. Come to a meeting when asked.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Technology, transparency, and community building offer a multitude of opportunities for people and organizations to share interests, work together for common purpose, and participate in programs that better support both organizations and people.

I’m excited by the work of Membership Puzzle, a group looking at what membership means for journalism. And journalism organizations like The Texas Tribune who are focusing on membership engagement as a core element of its future growth and sustainability. Know of a project in the US or global NGO/nonprofit sector that’s assessing and testing membership? Would love to hear about it.

 

Flock of sheep photo via PublicDomainPictures.net. CC0 1.0 Universal.

Creating the most important organization in the world by caring for your members

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Care about branding and marketing at your organization? Then care about your members.

This tweet by Troy Theodore Wruck shares a quote from Buffer co-founder Leo Widrich should be pinned on the wall of nonprofit directors.

At every nonprofit, a lot of money, thinking and time goes into serving the mission, the issue, the clients. And, usually, a lot goes into branding exercises, strategic plans, marketing materials, building social media followings and email lists. Perhaps much of those resources are focused on the wrong set of people.

Typically, not much goes into serving and supporting those members, fans, followers, or even donors. Many organizations with hundreds of thousands of members have just a few “member services” staff. They often don’t know their members and messages to them are rarely, if ever, intended to create conversation.

These are the people that already like you. Don’t just ask them for money. They’re not valuable to you. Your organization is valuable to them. Meet your mission and help the people, creatures or places you serve. Of course.

But focus more on valuing the people that already support you and you’ll be able to better serve your mission.