Building Digital Communities

What is a digital community?

At RNW we define a community as “the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.”  Digital is simply something that takes place on the internet. This is limited so we can expand on this definition by looking at some key features.

A digital community is a group of people:

  • Who come together for a defined purpose
  • Who engage on content shared with the community (both made by community or the community managers)
  • For whom engagement is focused on purpose
  • Who participate because they feel they get something out of it (there is a benefit)

The community has rules and governance structures like any other community. Some of these features include:

  • The community is managed and often moderated 
  • Communities work best when there is ownership by the community (members have active roles) 
  • The community presents a real value addition, for example removing confusion, providing entertainment or essential information.

Key benefits of digital communities

In order to understand if a digital community is right for you, you need to understand what it can provide from a programme.

  1. Ability to implement programmes via the digital space
    • Building digital communities can be an alternative way to mobilize communities in situations, such as Covid-19, where there are limited possibilities to achieve this on the ground or through face-to-face engagement.
  2. Mitigate risk: Increasing resilience and sustainability 
    • In view of the global trend of shrinking civic space, digital communities can function as an alternative civic space for (young) people to voice their opinions and exercise their right to freedom of expression, assembly and association in a safer environment to influence decision-makers.
    • In restrictive or conflict-affected settings, safety and security risks can affect or hinder implementation of programmes on the ground. These risks can be mitigated by using digital communities, as they can exist beyond a physical space.
  3. Awareness raising and campaigning
    • Is your goal to spread awareness of a message or information? Digital communities allow for targeted reach and potentially more spread of information.
    • Raising the profile of issue (more exposure).  
  4. Scale reach and engagement 
    • Programmes can be scaled from a few people on the ground to thousands, and even millions. Does your programme need scale?
  5. Deliver access to information 
    • Digital communities can effectively be used to disseminate information to large (targeted) audiences.
  6. Access intelligence of many
    • Do you want to source insights? Or is it important to understand a wide range of viewpoints? Digital communities enable the crowd sourcing of solutions and problems.
  7. Reaching specific groups
    • Essential way to reach young people – even in areas where internet penetration is low. If your aim is to reach the youth (anyone under 35), its essential that digital communities are included in your strategy.
    • New ways of reaching remote populations at much lower costs, increasing the potential for equitable access to core services.
    • People with less of a voice (marginalized groups, minorities) or less power in policy and business debates can be enabled, strengthened and represented.
  8. User generated data can be used as evidence and for advocacy
    • Better understand beneficiary group and improve advocacy on their behalf.
    • Donors/funders are demanding more data and evidence; digital communities produce a wealth of data that can be used as evidence.  
  9. Raise funds
    • Digital communities enable public donations or campaigns to drive funding.
    • Having large digital communities enables advertising revenue.
    • Larger communities also attract donors and funders.
  10. Increasing legitimacy of the organization
    • By building digital communities, organisations can increase their legitimacy to act as they can represent (the voices) of large groups of people.

The pitfalls of digital communities

There is an old geek joke: “Where do you hide a dead body?” – On page two of any Google search!

Many NGOs think digital impact happens by creating online what you do offline – and that it happens spontaneously. If you build a platform people will come. How many websites exist in the graveyard of the second page (or deeper) of Google’s search? This is the same for failed Facebook groups and apps that were developed and quickly abandoned. 

When you build a digital community without understanding the full needs there are potential risks, including:

  • Undermining your impact, if you are unable to engage the desired audience
  • Discouraging your team from pursuing digital as way to achieve impact
  • Stagnating the progress you are making in your programme
  • Discouraging donors on seeing the value of digital impact  
  • Wasting money  
  • Wasting time