Effectively Showing Community Impact

I’ve heard a lot of buzz lately about community ROI and measuring community KPIs. These metrics can be a valuable way to measure how your community impacts your association for stakeholders who are doubtful of the impact the community has on the organization.According to David Spinks, Founder of CMX, an organization to help community professionals thrive, in an interview with Forbes.com, successful community professionals:

1. Build, engage, and scale a community program
2. Measure their work and ensure they’re impacting business objectives.

He goes on to explain what makes a truly successful community professional is being great at the second element.If you really want to demonstrate how community impacts business objectives (be familiar with your organization’s strategic plan) your association leadership must look beyond ROI and community KPI’s. Here’s why:Understand the function of your community What role does your community play in your organization? Is your community increasing engagement and membership retention? Is your community creating networking opportunities for members? Is your community being used to generate innovative ideas? Does your community have a support element?My guess is your community is fulfilling several vital pieces of your business objectives. Is it fair to measure ROI based on ONE of those business objectives? I don’t think so. Your community has much broader value than one specific ROI metric. I suggest sitting down and examining what functions your community serves and how that relates to business objectives. Here’s an example of how our organization impacts business objectives:

1. Membership engagement: Think of your community as the gateway for engagement. Not everyone has the time or resources to attend in person meetings or be a part of a committee. But they can learn from the discussions and meet new members via their engagement in your community forums.
2. Mentoring: We run our national mentoring program through our Higher Logic platform. This is an easy way to have members meet each other and remain involved in our organization.
3. Committee Tools: We use our Higher Logic platform to manage our 600 plus committees. Committees members can contact each other through the platform, store documents, and communicate about meetings. This is an invaluable tool for efficient committee work.

These elements are all so different, but so important to our Society. How can you put a single ROI to encompass all these aspects? Our main KPI for our platform to date has been the “agreed to terms” metric. This tells us how many members have logged in to see the platform. However, this is a metric we have looked at internally within our department. It is not a widely used KPI we share with our Board of Direction.We have a young professional forum with resources that does not require a login (we look at Google Analytics to measure these metrics). Agreed to terms also does not measure the members who receive and read our digests (I compile open rates from the digests to measure these metrics).While it is important to monitor these metrics monthly, they are not something I share with leadership on a monthly basis. What I do share is three metrics in a paragraph format for our Executive Report. These are snapshots of how I believe our community has significantly impacted the organization. How do you know that? You HAVE to be aware of the organization’s goals and strategic plan. Too often community managers think their community operates as a single community. It is just a snapshot of the organization’s membership, community, and culture.All elements of the community should be seen in the lens of the organization’s strategic goals and KPIs.Transparency is very important to our organization. The Executive team’s agendas and minutes are available for staff. Our Board of Direction meeting was broadcasted to membership this past week. Because it was held at headquarters, I had the opportunity to attend. I did from 9am to 6:30pm.  You need to be aware of what the goals are for the organization and fashion community goals based on the organization. Know what your Board and Executive team value and share these metrics monthly with your leadership and team.The greatest power you have is your analytics. I often hear from members of our Leadership team in regard to popular discussions, “Oh, that’s great members are really talking about X.” You need to dig in and show them the different elements of how the community directly relates to strategic goals. I guarantee you your community is impacting these goals, but you need to demonstrate that through metrics - not just one ROI or a handful of KPIs. Look at every element and figure out how you can best tell your organization’s story to your stakeholders.