Community Engagement Essential Practices

Do you need to engage a community? Do you ever wonder what the essential practices are?

1. A regular gathering

Whether it’s a nightly gathering around the dinner table, weekly sports matches, monthly leadership workshops, quarterly chapter meetings, or annual conferences — you engage a community by regularly gathering together. It’s the foundation.

How regularly you gather is down to your community, but it should be rhythmic. This applies to offline, online, or hybrid.

When I work with a community, my first port of call is: when is your meeting?

2. Regular, clear communication

Twin to the regular gathering is regular communication. How regular is down to your unique situation, but it should be anticipated and relevant. People should notice when you DON’T do it, because it’s that predictably regular and valuable.

3. Member-to-member interaction

A community that gathers around one person, where each person only engages “upward” to that one person, is not a community. It is a following or an audience. That’s a fine thing, but it’s not a community.

A community is where members derive value by interacting with each other “sideways” at a peer level. In your regular gathering and communication, there should be member-to-member interaction: interviews, coffee breaks, member spotlights, member-led portions, breakout rooms, Q&A, and so on.

4. Optional: a purpose

It’s ironic that it’s optional to have an explicit purpose. Many communities run absolutely fine without one — it’s often implied. Neighbours meeting regularly have an implicit purpose of neighbourly connection.

The more explicit your purpose can be, the better. But the regular meeting, communication, and member-to-member interaction are the non-negotiables.