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Participation Rainbow

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Participation Rainbow

Imagine a scenario where all of your community members take on leadership roles and participate actively. That sounds great, right? After all, isn’t the whole point of community activation to mobilize the community? Like most things in communities, it’s not that simple (or realistic). So I propose that we embrace this complexity! Introducing the Participation Rainbow…

The Participation Rainbow is humanistic and empathetic

A community is made up of individuals, who volunteer their time and goodwill to participate. Each person has numerous life priorities that can outcompete their ability to contribute to a community. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs emphasizes this nicely. In other words: a volunteer community is probably not the most important thing going on for most people. 

People’s participation in a community ebbs and flows over time. Sometimes they are just too busy, distracted, or just hanging on by their fingertips to the whirlwind of life to be able to participate. At other times, their life has slowed or they have needs that the community can fill. When this happens, the community is there—a safe and welcoming home that is happy to see a member whenever and however they want to participate. 

A Participation Rainbow values everyone in your community

The Participation Rainbow helped me to stop thinking about how to “improve” participation in communities, and instead embrace the beauty and value of the different ways that people do participate. Here’s what a Participation Rainbow might look like:

Figure 1. Example of a Participation Rainbow. CENTER: The organization and the community builder & manager identify structures and processes for the community while also orienting members. CORE COMMUNITY: 1. Volunteer leaders that participate consistently (e.g., advisory board), 2. People who regularly attend events, engage with other members, and respond to calls to action, 3. People who consider themselves members, but may not be very visible. OUTER COMMUNITY: 4. People who sign up for your newsletter and regularly attend public events, 5. People who follow your social media and have a general interest in your mission, 6. People who have interacted with your community at some point and know you exist, 7. Everyone else who could be a part of your community!

Here’s how the Participation Rainbow can work in the practice of community building (based on the Figure above):

Consider the whole community

How do you define the boundaries of your community? What determines when someone is a part of the community? It’s likely that you have some sort of core community, for example individuals that pay membership dues or who have applied to join. 

What you might be overlooking, however, are the segments of your community that fall outside of this core group. For example, an outer ring could consist of people who attend your public events or receive your newsletter. An even further ring could consist of people who simply follow your social media.

When you are establishing and building your community, consider all of the different segments of your community and how they come together as a whole. How will you communicate with each segment? How will your services and offers differ? What are your community building goals for each segment?

Build participation diversity into the core community 

Your core community will consist of individuals that range from highly active (e.g., volunteer leadership) to much less active (e.g., individuals that check in now and then). The middle range can consist of people who attend specific types of events, respond to calls to action (e.g., filling out a survey, weighing in on a community decision), and interact via communication platforms (e.g., a Slack workspace).

The most important thing to remember here is that ALL of these different ways of participating are welcomed and valued. While some people might be the “ebb and flow” types (i.e., moving closer or farther away from the ring of high participation), others might be quite happy with their current level of involvement. Therefore, your goal as a community builder/manager is to: 
* Meet people where they are, such as by diversifying communication platforms and approaches, and
* Make it easy for people to change their participation level if and when they want to. 

Lessons learned from the Participation Rainbow

Build a community that anticipates and cherishes the diversity of participation that exists among members. 


There are no hard lines between participation levels (i.e., participation diversity), but having a general idea of these levels can help you build a community that is more inclusive, humanistic, and resilient to change.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank the Ronin Institute community for engaging in the deep thinking, questioning, and experimenting that helped develop this concept of the Participation Rainbow.