How to build an online community

Building an online community has many benefits. It helps bring your charity online to where the people are. It means that participants can connect instantly and express themselves in authentic ways – and across geographical distances.

 

Whether you’re looking to deepen community support for your service users, spread enthusiasm and tools for success among volunteers and fundraisers, or raise support for your mission, there’s much you can achieve by building your own online community.

 

In this article, we explore exactly how charities can build their own online community to help work towards their mission, with help from Public Interest Registry (PIR) and their trusted family of domains.

 

 

Get up and running with the .ORG family of domains

 

 

Know your “why”

 

Be clear on how launching an online community would help your mission. It could be that an online forum would help make a greater impact by giving service users the opportunity to speak to others with similar experiences.

 

Or you may want the community to help drive your impact by engaging volunteers, fundraisers, or donors through social media.

 

Getting specific about the purpose of the online community, and who will participate, will help you define what is within the remit of the project and build efficiently towards success.

 

 

Understand stakeholder needs

 

Now you know whether the community will involve your service users, volunteers, fundraisers, or another group (and why!), it’s time to understand that group better.

 

Online, communities pop up organically as people connect over common interests, wants, and needs. To build a thriving online community as a charity, it’s important to allow your existing stakeholders to lead the way in defining what would be genuinely beneficial for them.

 

That way, the community will feel authentic and stand the test of time, creating positive connections unique to those users have formed elsewhere.

 

Beneficiary feedback mechanisms like user research interviews and surveys can help you discover more about your stakeholders’ needs.

 

Meanwhile, as PIR notes, analysing the engagement data from your website and other channels can be insightful for understanding what resonates most with your online users, better reaching your audience and fulfilling your organisation’s mission.

 

 

Create a safe and inclusive environment

 

To enable people to be comfortable to participate in your online community, it’s important to create the right environment.

 

Considerations for you to take include ensuring platform accessibility, complying with GDPR, providing rules for community participation, moderating interactions, and safeguarding community members.

 

And, on the most foundational level, people need to feel that the community is hosted on a safe, trusted, and credible platform. You can demonstrate your website’s security, as well as your commitment to your cause, by using the .ORG domain at the end of your web address.

 

For more than 30 years, the .ORG domain has conveyed credibility because it’s the domain most associated with organisations who are making the world a better place. It’s the most secure domain space, maintains the highest standards, and is the most trusted domain, with 11 million people and organisations using it.

 

More than 50% of the proceeds from each .ORG domain registration goes to the Internet Society and contributes to keeping the Internet open, free, and accessible to all. PIR, who manages the .ORG family of domains, is passionate about empowering mission-driven organisations to shine online.

 

 

Build authentic connections

 

Building a community requires organisations to be humble. It involves relinquishing some control and allowing the people involved in the community to make it their own.

 

Your charity and its team will be among the most visible members of the community, as its hosts. Being approachable and communicating with personality are great ways to help people feel engaged, welcome, and ready to participate themselves.

 

On text-based platforms, it’s worth considering how you might humanise the community through the screen, and give informal opportunities for connection between members, like online video calls, or sharing photos or videos.

 

And to foster connection between members, it’s your job to encourage interaction. That might be, for example, through polls, asking questions, or setting challenges.

 

As a charity, you should participate in the community by being prepared for a two-way dialogue. Pay attention to the themes members discuss and feed them back into your charity’s work. Then reflect to your community how you have listened.

 

As PIR says, “When nonprofits lead with community expertise, engagement becomes not just emotional, it becomes ethical, sustainable, and genuinely mission aligned.”

 

 

Get up and running with the .ORG family of domains