My Community Membership: How’s It Going?
A healthy community has structure that furthers the collective interests of the group and the entity itself. Understanding the structure, whether formally defined or informally recognized, will help you understand the strength of the organization and what role you might play in perpetuating and perhaps strengthening the community.
There are a few defining structural concepts that are important for creating, fostering, and sustaining an organization. There are many books that look at community structures — formal and informal, membership and leadership. This post is just an introduction to the concepts to help you assess your current and future organizations.
Rules, Policies, and Procedures, oh my!
Rules, policies, and procedures are present in every community whether they are official and in writing, casual and unspoken, or a combination of the two. The RPP trio helps define the entity by setting expectations of involvement, determining membership, structuring leadership, and driving expectations of behavior for members. The policies can range from basic such as outlining mutual respect and polite interactions to detailed operating procedures as in Robert’s Rules of Order. These elements usually have been established by early leadership and can be changed.
The success and sustainability of the community as well as your success with it is dependent on you and the other members adhering to the agreed upon policies or working to improve them. Generally, strong, self-sustaining entities have some formal rules and policies that are documented and shared with members on a regular basis. By-laws are a common example of formal rules and should be available to all. Unspoken policy might be that participants help identify and support new or younger members or members are expected to attend a minimum number of events.
Now it is time to look at some specific elements of community structure.
Being a Member
A crucial part of the identity of a community is feeling like you belong — that you are more than a participant, you are a member even if there is no fee. As a reminder, members receive benefits such as the support of the group and have responsibilities for supporting the purpose of the group and supporting each other. It is important to be comfortable with and like others in the group.
Whether explicit and, possibly, written, or implicit there is some policy that defines who is “eligible” and who is in the group. The rules of membership provide boundaries that limit the size of the community which contribute to the sense of belonging and foster the personal bonds that define a community.
The boundaries of membership which provide the structure have two fundamental characteristics:
· The specific qualifications and
· The formality in how they are applied.
Qualifications can range from having a skill at a certain level within a company or being part of a team to working for a cause to paying dues or some combination. There might be informal boundaries such as attending church services or a more formal application or test such as demonstrating a level of proficiency in a foreign language. Formal and strictly followed boundaries mean it is clear when a person is in the group such as having paid dues or been accepted through a process or being an employee. Loose boundaries mean that members may come and go more easily and that it is not always clear if people “on the fringe” are in or out of the community.
Note that rigorous qualifications and formal boundaries generally make communities exclusive and limit participation more than self-selection and informal barriers. Strict boundaries and exclusivity make sense for entities such as a chorus needing a balance of voices and regular attendance. Other times, formality can be a negative characteristic if it excludes or discourages new members for the wrong reasons or too strongly. Ethical and moral issues can arise from membership criteria so be thoughtful about your choices. If the membership qualifications or formality do not seem appropriate, you might choose not to join or decide to leave a group and find a more hospitable entity with the same interest.
Membership can be tiered with different qualifications and boundaries for different levels. Clubs often have junior members, full members, and senior members based on criteria such as age and/or years of membership. Professional organizations might have levels of membership based on skill, experience, or qualification level. Even an organization with a strict definition of membership such as alumni of a school might extend to parents and donors as associate members.
To be or not to be…a member
It is time to look at your communities to consider how the membership structure affects you. These questions can be applied to all types of entities:
- What is the system for identifying members? (e.g. employed by a company, in an industry, share a hobby, support the same cause)
- What are the criteria/process for joining? (e.g. be employed, take a qualifying test, sign up for a music group, pursue a sport)
- Do you like the other members (if you know any of them)?
- Are you comfortable with the policies?
Beyond the Basics
The size of the group can also matter. You might like being part of a small group where you know everyone, or you might prefer to join a larger organization where you can meet many new people or both. Your participation should generate personal connection to others.
Large entities provide community through subgroups that might be nested one within another or overlapping. A subgroup or tier may even address more specific or different (though related) interests than the large group. You might be part of the larger entity or in a sub-group or both. Here are some examples that offer these options:
- local chapters within regional chapters within a national or international organization such as NOW, ACLU, American Cancer Foundation, Freemasons, Elks, Rotary, etc.
- departments, units, or affinity groups within a corporate entity
- fraternities and sororities within their national structure and within a university
- block associations within city organizations within a state-wide entity.
To complicate matters, subcommunities can also intersect, overlap, or cooperate so you might think about which subcommunity is of greatness interest to you. You might want to choose a team for a local sports league, or it might be about what chapter of a national organization or possibly change department at work. For now, think about:
- What are the opportunities for being part of a subgroup?
- Am I interested in the umbrella entity or a sub-entity or both?
- What level or tier of membership do I want?
With your understanding of what you want from membership, it is time to evaluate the value of membership. Check out https://impactrics.com/7-questions-about-your-member-experience/ for a framework of evaluating the membership structure of an entity.
“Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member” — As quoted in The Groucho Letters (1967) by Arthur Sheekman.
(The sentiment predates Marx by 61 years, however; it likely originated with John Galsworthy in The Forsyte Saga.)
