Here’s an online community that is simple and elegant and works really well. The Nonprofit Technology Network, a professional association for nonprofit technologists (leaders, marketers, those responsible for educational programs, IT directors, and communications staff), has an online community powered by Higher Logic.
Full disclosure: I did some pro bono consultation with NTEN before they launched this community and they didn’t ask to have their community featured here.
So here’s what I really love about NTEN’s community: they have stripped out all the unnecessary bells and whistles down to the core functionalities, which focuses the engagement into the most popular and visible parts of the community — a best practice we advocate for with all our clients. Let’s look at a few key parts of the community.
1. The community is open to members and non-members.
(You can check it out for yourself here.) And the community home page is super streamlined: There are only three primary navigation buttons, a prominent (if maybe a little too large) call to action to “Join the Discussion”, and excerpts from the five most recent discussion posts.
YES, SERIOUSLY! THAT’S THE ENTIRE HOME PAGE! As a bonus, this simple layout lends itself well to the responsive mobile design when viewed on a phone.
2. NTEN limits groups (communities) to several main communities only:
- the overall NTEN Discuss community;
- conference-related communities – see 15NTC, this past year’s conference community. It’s closed off to new posts after a certain time has passed after the face to face event is over, and everyone redirected to the others in this list;
- locally based groups – see for example the 501 Tech Club DC group;
- a private group for the Board of Directors;
- and Communities of Practice – see for example the Technology Decision Makers group.
There are no user-created groups; in order to start a Community of Practice, members must go through an approval process which ensures proper administrative (volunteer-based + NTEN staff) support for each CoP and a regular schedule of programming in whatever form (calls, Twitter chats, Google Hangouts etc) is desired. NTEN has actually developed a CoP Organizer position description that describes the role and responsibilities of CoP community managers.
3. They focus most discussions on one forum, the NTEN Discuss forum, EXCEPT where people are coming together face to face. Here’s the description:
“Looking for software or hardware recommendations? Want to know how others are using text messaging in their work? Trying to find examples of IT policies? The NTEN discussion list is a great resource for all of the above and more! It’s the general discussion list for the NTEN community, and folks all over the country (and the world) are sharing their questions, answers, and news about nonprofit technology.
Shortlink: http://community.nten.org/ntendiscuss”
Of note, they do not allow posts about jobs on the Discuss forum, instead pointing people to their new job board.
4. NTEN limits the other functionalities of the platform.
You can view discussions, a file library (resources) and a searchable list of members. That’s it.
5. NTEN has simplified the layout to the essentials.
Each page has a simple list of discussions (or files or members). No sidebars, no ads, no banners, no event calendars, no leaderboard, no social media feeds.
The result? A site that concentrates engagement into its main discussion forums. It’s simple and it works.
Do you have a NITRO community design you would like me to feature on this blog? Contact me by email at [email protected].