Imagine three concentric circles.At the core are your most active members, the community weavers, the stewards, maybe the co-founders, the people who take initiative and make things happen.Around that, in the middle circle, are committed members. They want to be part of this group, they contribute and participate to their abilities, they make this group fun and purposeful.And then there is the outer circle. These are the people who are mostly passive. They observe. If they show up to activities, they show up as consumers. But most of them never show up. Some of them were maybe once active in the past. Some of them you have never seen.
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- community engagement, community building,
- [note::The 3 Cohorts of Community:

1. Commited stewards - How can I serve?
2. Active co-creators - How can I contribute?
3. Passive Consumers - How can I benefit?]

I tried really hard, mostly by doing more: more events, more online engagement, more outreach. More. But that turned out to be an exhausting and often impossible task. Force doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in most parts of life, but especially not in non-hierarchical and volunteer-driven environments like communities. It takes a lot of energy to convince a passive person to be active and the results are often short-lived. I can’t push anyone into anything.
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- [note::Very, very relatable!]

Instead of pushing people to become more active, my work now becomes two-fold:My work with the middle and inner circle is to support them, to coach them, to help them bring their gifts into the community. This creates a healthy and stable core from which the group can grow. And it removes tremendous pressure from my shoulders that this group is only successful if everyone is active. I work with who wants to show up.My work with the outer circle is to keep them informed and to create light-touch invitations. I make sure the people in the outer circle feel that they are invited to step into the middle if they choose to do so.
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- [note::* Inner circle = Support and enage

• Outer circle = Inform]

most people’s activity levels fluctuate heavily over time.
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- [note::Life happens. You can't force or control the ways in which people engage with your community - and trying to do so might push them farther away than they might've gone otherwise.]

Me trying to convince them to be active won’t change much, instead their engagement heavily depends on context: A community has to fit in terms of interest, purpose, values, people and, most of all, timing. All I can do is to make sure that they feel invited when they are ready.
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This long-term cycle of individual engagement, disengagement and re-engagement only happens if the community still stays somewhat present in the passive members’ mind. Are they still receiving a regular newsletter? Do they still know where to connect if they choose to? Are they still invited to the global summit once a year?
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To make this choice explicit, some communities have formalized the different circles (sometimes more than 3) into distinct roles. You choose a role that you commit to. Every role comes with a different set of expectations, different rights and commitments.For example, the community Enspiral has several formalized circles: there are Enspiral Members, Contributors and Friends & Partners. There are written out expectations that come with each role. And, importantly, there is fluidity: people can change their levels of engagement as it aligns with their lives.
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“Unequal participation is natural”
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