Wiser.org Blog

Eric Magnuson and Karen Uffelman presented a very engaging session today at #11ntc around the secrets of the Engagement Pyramid. How do you engage your community? How do you identify the people who are more closely attached to your mission? Those questions were answered today.

I’m in Washington, DC for the Nonprofit Technology Conference hosted by NTEN. I had the chance to be part of a very interactive session on community engagement. Eric and Karen shared the importance of having an Engagement Pyramid for a non profit trying to go its community.

Here are the 6 stages they described:

1. Observing
   You might not know the people within this stage.
   The nature of their engagement is sporadic, indirect.
   Metrics: website traffic, poling, media impressions
2. Following
   You should know those indiviuals, they might have signed up for a newsletter. There is some kind of trust already built.
   Nature of engagement is direct and regular
   Example metrics: Good candidate, they are doing more that just watching you
3. Endorsing
   They tend to be individuals who contacted the decision maker in the organization. They are public endorsers
   Nature of Engagement: straightforward, single step transactions
   Metrics: members of low level donors
4. Contributing
   Individuals at this level show up and participate in meaningful ways.
   Nature of engagement: Multi step transactions
   Metrics: regular volunteers, regular activists, mid level donors, content contributor
5. Owning
   Nature of engagement: ongoing, collaborative
   Example metrics: more subjective metrics, major donors
6. Leading
   Engagement: ongoing acts of leaderships
   Board members are good examples

Eric Magnuson and Karen Uffelman shared the example of the Washington Bus Pyramid Engagement. In this case, the Washington Bus had a strong base of individuals at the higher levels but found it very challenging to bridge the gap between level 2 to level 4. Apparently this is very common for non profits. Non profits tend to attract a lot of individuals at level 1 and 2 but tend to not be able to transfer them to higher levels.

PRINCIPLES AROUND THE PYRAMID
Once you have identified your engagement pyramid, how do you engage with the people? There are various ways to do so: Website content, email marketing, social media, in person events, advocacy, fundraising, volunteering, collaboration, your superpower, webinars, help line, games. However you need to keep in mind some key principles:

• You should only use a pyramid for those interested in your organization.
• Only include things you can know and count. The engagement pyramid is to show growth over time so you need to be able to count and measure progress.
• Only do as much engagement as you can track.
• The people who are in your engagement are there because of will and/or passion about what you are doing.

MY OWN TAKEWAY

• People who are on top of the pyramid are people you know. You just need to document that and target your communication to them accordingly
• Don’t track too much information. Only track valuable data.
• You need to be abel to quantify the return of the engagement pyramid, and ensure that your audience is moving up
• Develop a communication strategy for each level of engagement
• As you try to create your engagement level, you may realize as you need to revisit the engagements you offer and this is OK.

For more in depth examples of non profits Groundwire worked with, visit:
- http://groundwire.org/resources/case-studies
- http://groundwire.org/blog/2011-ntc-engagement-pyramid

Tags: 11ntc, community, engagement, eric magnuson, groundwire, Karen Uffelman, nct, NTEN, salesforce