The Community Canvas — How to build Community in today’s Society

The Future of Associations in Today’s Society (Part 3 of 3)

Today’s Associations have systematic organizational problems that places them in a dilemma between operating amateurish or giving up their core values of democracy and voluntariness. Other organizations of civil society have left Associations aside and question their relevance. To find a distinct path for them to be both idealistic and successful, organizational research delivers a framework for them to restructure: the Community Canvas.

Under- or Overorganization are risks of associational structure — time to rebuild and modernize.

TLDR: Engagement within our civil society is mostly facilitated by clubs and associations. Their ideals of voluntariness and democratic decision making foster social inclusion and political participation of their members. Over the last years however, they have encountered substantial organizational challenges and are facing a loss of these ideals. The Community Canvas is a framework of 7 domains, each with principles and practices, in 4 layers. It most importantly requests aligning members strongly by purpose, distribution of knowledge and information by digitization, and limitation of responsibility and workload by restructuring.

This is the third and last part of a mini-series, I am writing alongside my research in organizational innovation within German Civil Society at the Technical University of Munich. In this third part, I’ll have a look into how associations can harness digitization and organizational innovation to overcome obstacle discussed in Part 1 and Part 2.

Part 1: Changing Engagement of a Changing Society (read here)
Part 2: Cannibalism and Competition in Civil Society Organizations (read here)
Part 3: The Community Canvas — How to build Community in today’s Society (this post)

This canvas proposes seven domains in four layers which relate back to important aspects of any organization that deserve a deeper look when considering how organizations are designed to fit into any environment. Each domain consists of a set of principles and practices; principles (derived from organizational trends out of my quantitative research) being the important aspects of said domain that are to be followed when considering its design or structures, and practices (derived from measures) which describes the concrete actions to be taken and implications that this domain has upon the operations of a given organization.

The Community Canvas 1.0

In the following sections, each domain will be described, its principles and practices defined, examples of concrete actions and policy measures will be provided, and the connections and potential implications of a domain will be analyzed.

Based on the identified trends and their organizational design implications as researched, I propose the following seven domains:

1. Purpose and Interests,
2. Structure and Accountability,
3. Authority and Governance,
4. Strategy and Coordination,
5. Communication and Collaboration,
6. Knowledge and Information, and
7. Membership and Participation.

As seen in the Figure, these domains are of various sizes and are stacked in a mosaic-like fashion. At the base of this canvas, the broad domain Purpose and Interests, which forms the foundation for this model and sets the frame of the model to align the other sections. Atop this domain are three further domains that define the basis upon which an organization operates: Structure and Accountability, Authority and Governance, and Strategy and Coordination. These foundational pieces now being in place, the domains Communication and Collaboration as well as Knowledge and Information cover how both purpose and operational guidelines from the below domains are carried into and manifest within an organization. These two domains form the basis for Membership and Participation. In the detailed breakdown of each domain, the intent behind the placement of each domain within the canvas will be made clear.

1. Purpose and Interests

This domain considers the common threads that convince members to join and stay in an association. An association’s purpose is its reason for being, the single main thread that holds it together. Hence, its communication and omnipresence is key. Members’ interests, while not directly related to the purpose (e.g. like members in a Rotary Club that play golf), also play an important role in that they are the constructs around which members form friendships and sub-groups within the organization (Zimmer, 1996).

The principles of this domain are:

• Universal purpose: a statement which encompasses the deeply rooted reason for the existence of an organization that is shared without compromise by all members.
• Explicit community identity: an organization’s brand is becoming more important in an increasingly digital world. Associations must establish a strong, agreed upon community identity and branding.
• Linked interest groups: organizations must facilitate connecting members of similar interests to activate and engage members on a deeper level.

Practices relevant to this domain are:

• Define and discuss purpose regularly: associations must work with all members to come to a universal consensus on the purpose of the organization. This purpose must be known and agreed upon by all, be brought up regularly for discussion and a framework must exist for members to work together to change this purpose.
• Community brand guide: just as companies create corporate identity guidelines, associations must also create their own set of brand guidelines that clearly state main colors, logo, and official name. These guidelines and graphic resources must be centrally available to all members.
• Member interest collection: to create better and relevant member experiences, associations must survey their members and compile their interests. This enables organizations to tailor their events, news, and mission to better fit to the topics important to their members.

Associations adhering to the rules set forth by this domain will take time at their yearly general member meeting to discuss their purpose, changes in members interests, and take time to align their mission as an association. Using the data they gather, these organizations will be able to contact their members with increasingly relevant content and adjust their event and news offering to engage more of their membership.

This domain forms the base of the canvas. The scope of an association’s purpose and members’ interests align all other domains placed upon it. It spans the entire width of the canvas because it has implications for all other areas and is the domain to which all others align.

2. Structure and Accountability

Organizational structure creates the environment upon which members in an association operate, while accountability defines responsibility within the association.

The principles of this domain are:

• Self-organizing: associations should be composed of teams which contain roles — these teams have a determinable level of decision-making authority. Teams take ownership of how they work and work toward meeting a vision or strategy determined by the association.
• Transparency: accountability and transparency go hand-in-hand and involve being open and honest with operations, transactions, and communications.
• Flexibility: associations and team structures are built to adapt to changes in the association, operations, and needs of those making decisions. A flexible system enables association to deal with changes in competition, technology, purpose, and membership.
• Self-allocation: members should be able to choose which teams and roles they want to fill based on their interests and skills.

The practices of this domain are:

• Specialized roles: roles are to be created based on accountability areas identified within teams. Associations will benefit from creating more smaller roles enabling members to engage more flexibly and take on multiple roles instead of extending a single role. Roles are no longer tied to long-term engagement, members can flexibly assume a role for a period of time when they are available and leave the role when they lack the time or resources.
• Purpose and accountability: both role and team constructs are defined with a guiding purpose and accountability criteria.
• Role marketplace: open roles within an association can be seen and applied for directly by members.
• Central digital organigram: roles and teams can be seen on a central digital platform to increase organizational transparency and make it clear for members how the association is built and where their roles belong.
• Leadership team: the organizational restructuring to a flatter model with more autonomy for the individual members in the system still requires leadership to maintain alignment across the organization. Each team has one leader to align the team to the goals and vision set by the organization strategy and the leaders of all teams form a central leadership team which ought to meet on a regular basis to maintain alignment.

Associations looking to empower and inspire members to action will do well to restructure their traditionally structures with committees and officers and work with members to create a flat organizational model with teams and roles. An important first step is to define a leadership team and which topics within an association merit the creation of a team.

This domain is the first step in building the framework for an association to operate from and is therefore in the “Building Framework” layer at the leftmost position. It is located directly below Communication and Collaboration because the structures that are defined in teams and roles have a direct effect on how members work together. When structures and accountability are defined in an organization, they need a system of rules to govern them and their interrelationships which is why Authority and Governance is located directly to the right of this domain.

3. Authority and Governance

This domain is the set of rules and practices with which an association ensures accountability and transparency in the organization’s relationship to its members.

The principles of this domain are:

• Autonomy: empowering members to make decisions is critical for creating engagement and driving involvement and creativity. Giving members more freedom leads to a higher sense of responsibility and greater satisfaction.
• Trust: To get the most out of member engagement, members will need to learn to trust one another to make the right decisions.
• Minimalism: Bureaucracy blocks productivity and prevents members from doing their best work — modern organizations seek to challenge existing policies and make sure all rules are absolutely necessary.
• Democracy: All members are involved in decision-making in the association and more decisions are made based on many member opinions instead of that of a few. Decision costs are small due to the use of digital technology.

The practices of this domain are:

• Polling and telepresence: employing association-wide polling technology makes it easier to form a consensus and involve more members in the decision-making process at a global, team, and local level. The virtual presence in meetings and digital votes have to be formalized by an explicit regulation added to the statutes of the association.
• Empowered decision-making: authority to make certain decisions is pushed to the members, roles who are affected by them, and those who possess the information to make an informed decision.
• Strict guidelines: members receive more freedoms due to a high level of autonomy yet must follow strict guidelines on which actions and decisions they may take.

To find success in this domain, associations must create a centralized set of rules and put mechanisms into place for members to change these. Implementation of association-wide polling technology helps teams and an entire association make better decisions at low cost.

The second domain in the “Building Framework” layer applies a set of policies and rules to the structure already put in place and is meant to ensure accountability. The positioning of this domain touching both domains in the layer “Enabling Engagement” underscores the importance of this defining set of policies and rules in how the members of an organization work, communicate, and share knowledge with one another.

4. Strategy and Coordination

The last domain in the layer “Building Framework” builds upon the structure that was defined and the set of rules to govern how they interact — this forms the basis with which an association can operate, yet these structures and rules are not yet aligned to support the purpose and interests of an association. Strategy and Coordination sets goals and aligns structures within an organization to work towards this set goals and support the shared organizational vision.

The principles of this domain are:

• Openness: creativity will be key for associations to successfully navigate today’s competitive world, and organizations must be open to members’ ideas and be prepared to try new events, methods, and policies.
• Fail fast: trying new ideas will inevitably lead to a few failures along the way — but these should be embraced. Learning from these failures will lead to finding future success.
• Reflection: successful associations will institute taking time for reflecting on past events and actions in order to be more successful in the future.
• Task division: creating a more attractive member experience requires making participation more flexible and breaking down tasks into smaller bite-size pieces so that more members can contribute to the association. These smaller tasks match the more and better-defined roles within the association.

The practices of this domain are:

• Gather feedback: Leaders and roles in associations need to speak early and often with members and community participants to gain insights on what may bother them and to gain new ideas for improvements. A formalized way for this feedback would be optimal.
• Retrospectives: associations’ team leaders have to take time to reflect on past events and failures to learn from them and make better decisions in the future.
• Funding diversification: associations must systematically engage new funding possibilities like sponsorships, crowdfunding and merchandising to reduce future dependence on member fees. Multiple roles must be involved to avoid information silos.

Associations that are open to new ideas and empower their members will enjoy more active and engaged members. To include more members and improve team coordination, a task manager ought to be added to each team to break down tasks and distribute them to members in that team.

This is the last domain in the “Building Framework” layer and aligns the teams to follow a common strategy. This domain is also deeply connected to Knowledge and Information which sits just above — all the lessons learned and ideas need to flow into the association knowledge base and made available to all members.

5. Communication and Collaboration

The first domain in the layer “Enabling Engagement” dictates how an association is connected and how it works together. Both domains that make up this layer relate closely to the digital infrastructure of an organization, meaning how it stores its data, which digital tools it uses, and how members communicate with each other — especially those who hold roles within the association.

The principles of this domain are:

• Individualization: members must be able to personalize how they are reached by an organization and how they want to communicate and collaborate with other members.
• Accessibility: associations must seek to make their work processes easy to access for members of all ages, devices, and membership statuses.
• Cloud collaboration: to harness the power of new technology, associations must be willing to adopt cloud-based tools that enable zero latency and location independent collaboration
• Embedded experts: to enable better decision making, organizations should seek to retain past holders of a role in the communication loop and make them available for questions from other members.

The practices of this domain are:

• Internal social platform: communication and productivity tools vary based on member preferences, but associations must implement a central closed social platform, where member data is connected to the tools they use to enable other practices and ensure continuity.
• Cutting-edge tools: cloud-based software for telepresence, task management, messenger apps, activity streams, real-time collaboration and file sharing activate productivity and accessibility for associations.
• Member pairing: to improve knowledge transfer and more deeply integrate new members, associations should pair new members with other active members based on common interests and responsibilities.
• Interdependent leadership: leaders of each team should also fill a role in at least one other team to gain insights into how others work and share techniques their team uses with others.

Associations putting these ideas to practice can expect more productive, effective and creative teams. Higher levels of members and community inclusion in communication and work will ensure an organization is more nimble and knowledgeable.

This domains placement shows that “Communication and Collaboration” — how members communicate and work — is the manifestation of the structure and governance set forth in the framework of an organization and enables members to engage in the organization and work together effectively. This domain is also closely connected to “Knowledge and Information” as these two key elements drive and support good communication, decisions, and collaboration.

6. Knowledge and Information

Knowledge and information needs to be shared, collectively gathered and streamed through the network of members instead of being isolated somewhere. Information flow leads to better decision-making efficiency, and agility within an organization. This domain is central to organizations success and is a great factor in enabling effective engagement by members.

The principles of this domain are:

• Cross-pollination: to spread information effectively across an entire organization, members ought to be encouraged to take on multiple roles in different teams to spread information and knowledge.
• Shared consciousness: information, knowledge, files, and communication must be stored centrally on one platform and available for all to be viewed and edited — a sort of shared internal wiki with sections created automatically based on roles, teams and events.
• Information streams: information is constantly shared among members, filterable by topics. Members are kept up-to-date whenever needed. Access to a central knowledge and information repository to find the answers they need is granted.
• Current member data: associations must strive to gather and keep member data up to date. Members must be able to update their own information held by the organization.

The practices of this domain are:

• Central knowledge base: data, files and knowledge must be digitally stored and available for all members to easily access.
• Peer-produced content: members can create their own entries in this knowledge base and contribute to other entries. Updates are shared continuously via information feeds.
• Digital role continuity: knowledge and lessons learned must be tied to roles to a) make it easy for members new to take on a role to start where the last member left off b) systematically ask members who leave a role to record their lessons learned and tips they have for their successor.
• Data quality automation: associations must implement a central mechanism for automatically updating member data and assuring essential information like contact information stays up to date.

Associations that build a strong knowledge base and put information in the hands of those who will benefit from it will enable members to work, plan, and communicate more effectively.

When this domain is implemented well by an association, it enables members to effortlessly draw upon the knowledge they need to communicate, make decisions, and act as informed members of that organization. This domain is located above Strategy and Coordination, because the information gathered across an organization — feedback, documents, knowledge — should drive strategy moving forward. This domain also touches Authority and Governance, because although all knowledge needs to be stored centrally and be available to all members, some information is internal and confidential and is only to be seen by a handful of members or roles which means a part of the digital storage system for this domain must enable role, member and team-based access controls.

7. Members and Participation

This domain crowns the Community Canvas and is built upon all other domains. This domain created the frame in which people can participate in an organization and defines Membership itself in the organization — and therefore fills the entire width of the “Community Interaction” layer.

The principles of this domain are:

• Motivation: associations must create a vision that inspires action and motivates members and rely less on forcing members to complete tasks and participate in a certain way.
• Flexibility: associations must seek to lower barriers to organizational entry by making participation possible at different engagement levels.
• Motivation: members who engage must be recognized to reward their engagement and inspire more members to get involved.
• Community inclusion: associations must seek to broaden member and community supporter involvement in their community to diversify the opinion pool, gather ideas, validate decisions and bind supporters to the association.

The practices of this domain are:

• Deeper non-member involvement: Increase opportunities for non-members to get involved and take part in organization activities. The digital social platform of the association could include limited accounts and events could be open for anyone to participate.
• Transform crowd of supporters into community: friends, family, and others connected to an organization must be nurtured to increase engagement from both members and non-members.
• Gamification: associations should adopt gamification measures built on internal social technology to increase member involvement, automate knowledge transfer processes, and spur members to interact in new meaningful ways. This system should reward and incentivize engagement as well as encouraging new members to engage as well. Examples are badges and scores that can be recognized in meetings.
• Surveys and contests: open sessions that includes members and community participants to generate new ideas for events and organization offerings. Open polls and survey to validate assumptions and decisions and connect with supporters.

Associations who can create superior member experiences will enjoy organic member growth and increased success. To start crafting this experience, associations must consider and first document the member journey — how someone is made aware of the association, how they are welcomed, which first steps they go through, and what they might think along the way. Associations must work with members to improve this experience to better understand and bind new members and drive higher member engagement.

This domain is broad and encompasses the ways people interact with an association and is aligned, built, and enabled by the domains below it.

In the end, this framework offers associations a comprehensive structure to reorganize and to implement several digital practices to ensure the sustainability of associations’ ideals. The framework’s principles aim to distribute work to more members organized in teams, centralize and gather knowledge systematically, include members and supporters location-independent into a digital community and to utilize limited and short-time member engagement sustainably. Furthermore, the framework aims to maintain democracy with low-cost digital tools and to formalize important processes like the sourcing of funds in an association.

However, the introduction of a comprehensive framework of these innovations like the Community Canvas presents great challenges in terms of commitment and software adoption to associations. The framework itself requires further theoretical enrichment, empirical tests and systematic and continuous improvement.

Written by Fabian Ahrens, responsible for Operations at Unaty. This post first appeared on Unaty’s Homepage, where we regularly share our thoughts on civic society, our community, software startups and how they can interact. Unaty’s Platform helps communities around the globe to reach and engage members.

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I am happy to share all my sources and research with interested readers, simply contact me via ahrens@unaty.de .