Community building tool - Engagement Pyramid

Source: Engagement Pyramid by Groundwire

Finding it tough figuring out how to recruit, maintain and develop engagement with your volunteers and community members ? The Engagement Pyramid is a wonderful framework that can help guide your community building efforts. 

The Engagement Pyramid Explained

Developed by Groundwire, the pyramid derives its ideas from community organization, relationship marketing as well as fundraising and combines them together into a very easy to understand model to help you focus your activities.

The pyramid has 6 levels to represent the different engagement level of volunteers and individuals with the bottom being the larger majority of your community who are not as engaged and the small number of individuals at the top who are super engaged. 

Thinking back to all the different non-profits I've been involved with, the shape of the pyramid is very accurate. There are almost always more slightly engaged volunteers as opposed to those who are deeply engaged. 

To gain more leaders you typically have to increase the engagement as well as develop the relationship the individual has with the organization so that they can move up in the pyramid. Here are some tips to help you naturally develop the level of engagement through improving the relationship these individuals have within your community.

Have a Engagement Plan that focuses on what's next in the relationship ?

You should always be thinking about what's the next step for this person and how you'll strengthen their relationship with your community ? Too often I see that volunteers are asked to help out once with no follow up afterwards to keep them engaged and the relationship dies there. If you don't invest in continuing the relationship then they won't move up the engagement pyramid to be your Evenaglist, leader or respond to our request for community support.

Build the middle of your pyramid

Recruiting volunteers and getting them engaged in one time tasks is what most non-profit organizations are good at. What most organizations are not great at is that they let individuals fall through the crack in the middle. Don't forget to have activities and tasks that continually develop their relationship with you and you'll have an army of super engaged supporters. 

Create a lists of all the different ways people can be engaged within your community and transform that into a flow chart that develops their relationship with you from their initial visit up to becoming your evangelist.

Community members = Friends

Lastly, grow your community base with the same mindset you have when making new friends. Be thankful and help them when you can so its a reciprocal relationship and always show appreciation ! Just imagine your community to be a database of friends who you want to be closer to and have better relationships. 

Keep all of this in mind and your efforts will result in a continually bigger and stronger tightknit community !

Happy engaging!

Source: Louis Du Mont

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By Stevie Vu

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