Topic 3: Engagement Pyramids

An Essential Tool   
Your engagement pyramid is one of your most important tools for understanding how supporters flow through your organization.  Your goal, as an engagement organization, is to increase the number of supporters that engage with your organization, and move a portion of those supporters up the pyramid so that they become increasingly engaged and active with your organization.  Once you understand this flow, you are in a much better position to tailor your communications directly to each level in your pyramid thus creating easy steps for people to get more involved. 

Find Your Super Volunteers - Moving Supporters Up the Pyramid
Most new supporters start off as observers.  They have found your website, signed up for email notices, they’ve “liked” you on Facebook or started following you on Twitter. Something has peaked their interest.  A large number of people may stay at this base level in your pyramid but it’s important to create and introduce easy opportunities for them to increase their engagement level.  Once an individual has found you or been introduced to your activities, programs or campaigns, what is their next level of engagement?  Is it signing your campaign petition or requesting educational resources?  From there they may be led to volunteer opportunities or to become a monthly donor.  As they work their way up the pyramid, they are increasing their commitment to your organization until they’ve reached the top.  Once there, they have become one of your super volunteers!  Now they may be a volunteer program lead, or a board member.

The Value of a Good Contact Database (which we will revisit in week 2 of this training).
Knowing your engagement pyramid will increase the effectiveness of your engagement activities.  It will allow you to more specifically tailor your communications to each layer of your pyramid.  Combining your pyramid with a contact database program that allows you to track where specific individuals are in your pyramid and target specific communications to each of those audiences is your next step towards effective campaign or program engagement communications.


ACTIVITY:  Think through the engagement steps in your organization, campaign or program.



Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 10, 2017 at 7:54 AM

    Step 1: Engagement via social media (we post twice per day), or conventional media (we aim to be in the public view, when there are discussions or issues centering around farmland loss/conversation).
    Step 2: Encourage supporters to become members.
    Step 3: Encourage members to come to an event (annual Farmland Forum, or farm celebration events when easements are established).
    Step 4: Encourage members to spread the word (the need for protecting farmland) and recruit others to join us in our joint mission.
    Step 5: Become involved in our programs, volunteer, or become a board/committee member.
    (Kathryn Enders, Ontario Farmland Trust)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousApril 11, 2017 at 11:43 AM

      This is great Kathryn. Thanks for sharing. I might encourage you to think through some 'early' engagement opportunities. Membership is often a leap for people who are otherwise supporters so identifying some easy and early ways those supporters can build engagement. I might also encourage you to think about including donors into your engagement thinking!

      Delete
  2. Rachel WangApril 11, 2017 at 10:40 AM

    I'm coming at the engagement pyramid from a different angle, i.e. engaging stakeholders/project collaborators vs. volunteers.

    Step 1: Host and/or attend informal and formal (networking) events
    Step 2: Follow up with folks on relevant conversations/contacts
    Step 3: Align goals/objectives and discuss collaboration opportunities
    Step 4: Deliver joint projects and/or funding/capacity support
    Step 5: Establish sustainable formal partnership

    (Rachel Wang, WWF-Canada)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousApril 11, 2017 at 11:46 AM

      Thanks for sharing Rachel. I might suggest breaking up your attend and/or host a networking event. It's easier to attend as an initial step and build to broadening out your "hosts" as a mechanism for deepening engagement.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Topic 4 - Leadership Development and Distributed Organizing

The following table details some of the key questions you can reflect on when assessing the robustness of your volunteer programs and teams. If you are looking to scale up your volunteer activities to enable capacity to deepen engagement with larger numbers of engaged volunteers, again this table will offer you some reflection on what tools, supports and systems may need to be designed to be able to best support this.   Remember, whether a volunteer run or staff supported organization, volunteers need support. This tool reflects on this and identifies opportunities for you to advance and strengthen these programs.  Question Your Answer Opportunities for improvement How many active volunteer groups/teams do you have?     What is the primary basis of these groups/teams (geographic, issue or program, function)?     How do you recruit for these teams/groups?     What is the average number of people in each group/team?   ...
Read more

Topic 1: Theory of Change

Defining your organization, groups or programs engagement-based Theory of Change helps you (and your team members) understand why engagement is important to your work and specifically, how strengthening your people power will achieve those outcomes.   By identifying your "If....then....because" statement you can put this rationale into a succinct and clear phrase that keeps focus on the purpose, and outcomes you are driving for in all your engagement activities.   IF WE  _____________________________________________________________________________________, THEN WE WILL ACHIEVE _____________________________________________________________________, BECAUSE __________________________________________________________________________________.
Read more

Topic 2: Recruitment and Listbuilding

In this topic, we explored deepening the understanding of who your priority people are for your engagement activities. This can often be answered by asking the question: who do we most need to engage to help us realize the change we wish to see? Once you know the answer to this question (and NO, the answer is not "everyone") then you can tailor recruitment strategies to reach these people. 1. Who are your people? 2. Where do you find your people? 3. What recruitment strategies would best identify and reach these people?
Read more