Finding "Community Success" Metrics that Make Sense

I have often been amazed at presentations I have been privy to at respectable nonprofits where a VP level, well-intentioned professional runs up a PowerPoint presentation talking about "unique visitors" to the nonprofit's great new web site.  Often these "reports" of escalating visitation are trumpeted as "success" even though the presenter fails to put the data into any meaningful context.  And often there are general nods from the seated audience that implicitly indicate agreement.

Frankly, this is baffling to me.  How is it that many in the nonprofit world have come to see the number of anonymous visitors to their public web site as being a valuable indicator of "success"?  This is particularly true to me when we think that most "cause-related" nonprofits with amazing social missions are by definition seeking to foster a base of support (i.e. real human beings participating in a community of common purpose).

While there is value to tracking the number of unique visitors and hits on your web site, there is a needed contextual framework to do so.  Does your organization use any type of strategic framework to plan for engagement with its base of support?  Do you segment users in any meaningful way?  And how do you measure success and hold your organization accountable for positive progress in building your community?

Based upon years of research, here is CoreWeb’s perspective on the questions you need to consider:

Firstly, ask yourself, “what are the strategies and goals we are trying to achieve with our external base of supporters?”  Is the answer:  More membership?  More fundraising?  Better advocacy impact?  More volunteers?   If you can clearly answer the larger “what” you are trying to achieve, then the second set of related questions is:   “How many Boosters do we have?” and “How many Joiners do we have?” and “How many Transients do we attract?”  Not all supporters are alike.   If you are not segmenting your base of support, then you are missing an opportunity.

Now stop!  What am I talking about?  What exactly is a “booster” and a “joiner” and a “transient”?  Well, let me explain.

Imagine viewing and assessing the strength of each person who is in your public base of support (non staff) through the dual lens of “participation” and “capability for leadership”.  Almost anyone can personally participate, right?  Examples include:  “I volunteer my time”; “I write a donation check”; “I tell a friend about the organization and its mission”; “I sign a petition or call my legislator”; “I attend an event”, etc.   CoreWeb calls these individuals “joiners”.  They make themselves known to the organization and make an emotional commitment to participate.  Most nonprofits are very competent at creating participatory calls to action for their base of support, and getting supporters to personally participate is hugely important.

But here is something even more powerful and compelling to consider: 

In a model that overly focuses on having nonprofit paid staff organize personal participation, there is an inherent limitation.  Your staff is overloaded with work already (and often by nature is more keen to do the good work themselves than organize external public supporters).  What if a nonprofit, instead, identified leaders in their base of support who had the capability to organize their own networks and/or “joiner” networks within the organization to accomplish key goals?  So, if donations and fundraising are a key goal, the nonprofit would find individual supporters who could galvanize a call to action for a larger group of donations!  Personal participation gives rise to a booster leader:  “I organize an outreach campaign at my company that causes 100 individuals to donate to the cause”; “I create a recruitment drive that yields two dozen new supporters”; “I take charge of a petition advocacy campaign in my town and generate 2000 signatures”; “I organize and run an event for the nonprofit at my local library”; etc.   You get the idea.

Joining is about caring enough to contribute your time, energy, and money to a cause.  Boosting is taking all the fine attributes of a joiner, but adding the leadership capability to multiply the contributions of one person across a network or workplace or local community.  All organizations organically have boosters.  But very few organizations actually take the time to plan and organize booster roles and then empower them with sufficient direction and/or resources to boost the impact of the cause!

When one uses CoreWeb’s framework and establishes trackable categories of “transients” (unknown anonymous visitors), “joiners”, and “boosters”, then one can imagine using CoreWeb’s Booster Dashboard to follow and track how many your organization has in each category.  On any given day, a nonprofit can take a snapshot of its entire base of support, and determine how many supporters fall into each bucket.  And the nonprofit can work diligently to set up clear attainable booster and joiner activities.  And hold themselves accountable for getting more boosters!  And getting more transients to become joiners.

So, how many boosters does your organization have?  Can you answer that key fundamental question?  I love the CoreWeb Booster Dashboard, because it graphically tracks those key transitions from “transients” to “joiners” to “boosters”.  These are metrics that staff, supporters, partners, and board members can all understand, and through which a nonprofit can hold itself accountable for energizing its base of support into a thriving community of positive but directed action!