People or organizations outside of your community who have a vested interest in the community’s success, which may include benefiting from the activities of the community. Stakeholders might include funders, related communities, or special interest groups.
Use of the word “stakeholder” is currently a topic of debate, which you can read more about in this article.
Personas are descriptions of fictional, representative members of your community. They are created by aggregating key characteristics of similar members to create representative descriptions.
Member types vary by community, but broadly describe the attributes (e.g., career stage, discipline, organization, etc.) of different groups within a community. Describing member types can help guide programming and communications.
Network-centric leadership is a type of leadership where the goal is to support and empower community members in working together. Network-centric leaders encourage cooperation, seek to distribute resources and power, and are responsive to the needs of community members. For a full description of network-centric leadership, see Andy Robinson’s publication; “The less visible leader.”
A short, stand-alone description or “executive summary” describing a community or collaboration. Community overview statements include the name of the community, why it exists, who participates in it and what members do together. It also includes information about who convenes the community (e.g., a host organization), the intended lifespan, and whether members connect in person or online.
Most common within established communities, this mode describes how members work together WITHIN the community to CO-CREATE something that they couldn’t do before. For example, community members might organize an event together, form working groups to push the work of the community forward, or establish new communication channels such as a podcast.
This is one of four modes of engagement described in the CSCCE Community Participation Model.
Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (2020) The CSCCE Community Participation Model – A framework to describe member engagement and information flow in STEM communities. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3997802
In this mode members of a community COLLABORATE with one another, often with the community manager providing scaffolding for success but taking a less visible coordinating role. Such collaborations might include co-authoring a white paper or blog post and may involve infrastructure created or maintained by the community manager, but used more independently by community members. For example, there may be general guidelines for writing a guest blog post that the community manager has created, but co-authors work together without the community manager to write the post.
This is one of four modes of engagement described in the CSCCE Community Participation Model.
Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (2020) The CSCCE Community Participation Model – A framework to describe member engagement and information flow in STEM communities. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3997802
In this mode, members are empowered to CONTRIBUTE in some way. Often these contributions are invited or facilitated by a community manager, especially in the early stages of a community, and might include presenting on a webinar, writing a guest blog post, or sharing resources on a community platform. One function of the contribute mode is to enable members to discover the skills and interests of others in the group by making knowledge more visible.
This is one of four modes of engagement described in the CSCCE Community Participation Model.
Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (2020) The CSCCE Community Participation Model – A framework to describe member engagement and information flow in STEM communities. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3997802
Groups usually begin in this phase, with a community manager or communications professional CONVEYing information for members to CONSUME independently of one another. This might look like a regular newsletter to an email list, social media posts to followers, or other broadcast communications.
This is one of four modes of engagement described in the CSCCE Community Participation Model.
Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (2020) The CSCCE Community Participation Model – A framework to describe member engagement and information flow in STEM communities. Woodley and Pratt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3997802
The importance of providing a range of inclusive, accessible programming options that support community members in engaging in a way that matches their current availability, preferences for engaging, and accessibility needs. Community members’ changing modes of engagement can be influenced by time, interest, and other things happening in their lives. (See CSCCE’s Community Participation Model)
Example: When sharing an invitation to a public webinar, you might also offer the information that a recording will be made available by a specific date for those who are unable to attend.
Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement. (2021) CSCCE Glossary: Inclusive Language in Community Building. Woodley, Pratt, Bakker, Bertipaglia, Dow, El Zein, Kuwana, Lower, Roca, and Santistevan doi: 10.5281/zenodo.5718783