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Community Connections: Using Technology to Further Your Mission
By Maggie Leithead

This paper was first presented at the Strategy Institute conference: Leveraging the power of Technology and the Internet for Non-Profits, September 21, 1999
Introduction
Why should you care about online communities?
What are the building blocks of a successful online community?
Steps toward a successful online community
Roadblocks to community building (and how to get around them)
Conclusion - Where to now?
Bibliography
Appendix A : Successful online community elements in action

Introduction
The days of the web brochure are gone. Welcome to the time of community building! Online communities are the latest buzz word. Call them "portals." Call them "sticky sites." Call them what you will. Online communities are focal points of interest and potential centres of influence in the online world.
Amid the media hype over e-commerce trends and access issues, a growing body of research continues to confirm the Internet's potential to create context for social interaction (Dibble, 1993; Hagell and Armstrong, 1997; Jones, 1995; Jones, 1998; Mynatt et al, 1997a). Nonprofits are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the web's community building potential. Many organizations already have healthy and active "real world" communities of support. In fact, most for-profit companies would jump at the chance to build the strong relationships that many nonprofits already have with clients, donors and volunteers.
With a ready-made and enthusiastic audience for nonprofit online participation, why does it seem that profit-seeking e-commerce is still driving the Internet juggernaut? The high cost of entry may be one reason. Lack of technical expertise another. However, there are a growing number of low-cost and even free solutions that will allow you to extend your services, develop relationships, and engage your audience online.
Remove the access and technological barriers, and Canadian nonprofits still don't appear to be making their way to the cutting edge of online community building. Many organizations are still stuck in the days of the online brochure. Their online efforts do not reflect the strength that so many possess in the real world: building a community around their cause. If nonprofits are to thrive - or even survive - in the online world, they must reorient themselves to view the Internet in terms of extending their mission, rather than as just another channel for promotion.
This paper will offer some directions for building a successful online community. It doesn't deal directly with online fundraising, volunteer recruitment, or the specifics of program delivery. Instead, it offers some rationales for going online, building blocks to use while developing your community, and ways to excite and entice visitors to become real and ongoing participants in your organization.

So what's a community anyway?
The Oxford Canadian Dictionary describes a community as "1a. all the people living in a specific locality. b. a specific locality, including its inhabitants. 2. a body of people having a religion, a profession etc., in common. 3. fellowship of interests etc.; similarity." The latter two definitions are most appropriate to any discussion of online community building, since the very nature of the Internet subverts the demand for geographic proximity.
What are the other characteristics of a typical "real world" community? Aside from geographic proximity and common interests, community members must understand common forms of expression such as jargon and acronyms ("Did you get the NSFRE RFP and run it past the CFO?"). Communities also have different standards and cultures that participants must learn to navigate. There may be well-defined roles and rules of etiquette for interaction among community members, such as reporting mechanisms, communication methods and evaluation procedures.

Real communities vs. online communities
Like many real world communities, online communities are centred on common interests. Unlike real communities, they are not necessarily constrained by geography (although many may serve a specific region). They must, however, generate a sense of place or localness. Participants must have the ability to participate in the community on an ongoing basis. With ongoing input from community members, the community will develop over time. Participants may take on multiple roles and use many modes of participation during its development. For instance, an online discussion moderator may also be a client who is taking a course online.
Like real communities, online centres have different cultures and boundaries. A chat room about body piercing may have radically different communication norms than an online discussion forum for people with eating disorders.
Online communities will almost always be integrated to some degree with real world communities. Be careful, however, to appreciate that an online presence is not just a way to attract donors, clients or volunteers to real-world projects and programs. In a successful online community, participants will flow back and forth between the real and virtual community. Event organizers who have coordinated plans via e-mail will meet at a fundraising gala. Volunteers may be recruited at your office but fulfill their duties online. Clients might participate in an online discussion and then seek out services from a local branch of your organization. Likewise, they may visit the organization first and then head to a web site for more detailed information. Donors may hear your appeal for disaster relief on the radio and head to the web site to make a gift.
Clearly, your online presence must be a carefully planned, integrated extension of your existing efforts at all levels within your organization.

Why should you care about online communities?
Below are eight great reasons to think more about online communities and how they can benefit you and your organization:

Strengths inherent in the medium
In terms of the medium itself, online communities offer a host of characteristics that are important for nonprofits:

Global reach: freedom from geographic boundaries
24/365: constant accessibility by visitors
Multimedia: the potential to use a variety of media to deliver your message to different audiences
Participant Driven: visitors choose when to visit the site, as well as how much information to retrieve, and the nature of their participation
Interactivity: communication can be bidirectional or multidirectional
Open and/or exclusive: communities may have different levels of access (Hallett, 1999)

Communities generate loyalty
People like to feel accepted and part of a community. They seek fellowship. Communities, in turn, generate loyalty from happy participants. If your online presence successfully creates a sense of community and loyalty, you'll be able to convert that loyalty into other forms of support. A more complete discussion of how to create a successful community takes place later in this paper.

Communities can be radically self-developing
If people like what you're doing, they'll tell their friends and colleagues. They will make suggestions for improvement because they feel a sense of ownership in the community. They will offer help and, as is the case in so many offline ventures, they will commit boundless hours of time and resources to your cause to help you move forward together.

Communities are a vehicle for mobilization
The overwhelming response to Hurricane Mitch, the war in the Balkans, and the recent earthquake in Turkey are just a few examples of global events that have sparked generous offers of help from people around the world. Relief agencies are receiving a growing portion of their donations online. The American Red Cross announced in August that it established a new 24-hour record for online disaster relief donations through its Internet site. On Friday, August 20, 1999 donations through www.redcross.org totaled US$138,508.00. The previous one-day online record of US$115,147.20 came earlier this year on April 7, during the Kosovo humanitarian relief effort.
In addition to fundraising, online communities can generate public participation in advocacy campaigns. Advocacy organizations are using the Internet as another way to inform supporters and the media. Using online alerts, they can mobilize campaigners to contact officials, both online and through more traditional routes such as phone, fax and letters. World Wildlife Fund Canada (WWF) uses an Advocates On-Line program, where supporters sign up for e-mail alerts. When a conservation issue comes up, WWF organizers send an e-mail message to members of the advocates program, asking them to contact politicians and decision-makers and voice their concerns.
ActionFAX is a free public service from WebNetworks that allows any Internet user to send fax messages to Ontario's MPPs and, soon, to Federal MPs. Users can write their own messages or send a pre-written note from one of many online campaigns.

Communities offer a way to extend existing services
Are there aspects of your programs and services that you could deliver online? Online communities can help extend your programs to a greater geographic area or a broader base of participants. The Alzheimer Society of Canada operates a 24-hour online forum where caregivers can meet with one another to ask questions and offer support. It has grown into the virtual version of a support group, and builds on the real-world work of Alzheimer Society counsellors (Agger, 1999).
The Kids Help Phone web site allows young people to interact with one another and with counsellors via a web-based forum system. The site currently hosts 11 discussion forums on a wide range of issues. The discussion is lively and participants are encouraged to call the toll-free help line if they need to speak with a qualified counsellor.

Communities are a vehicle for potential new client services
Consider the needs of your clients and the strengths of the online world to discover opportunities for new services. The Arthritis Society recently opened an online storefront to sell assistive devices. The Toronto Reference Library operates a Virtual Reference Library with numerous subject areas and links to databases of information as well as other web sites. The Canadian Red Cross will soon train and certify Ontario boaters with an online course and examination.

Communities enable greater inter-agency collaboration
Nonprofits are constantly being asked to do more with less and pressure continues to mount for agencies to collaborate with other organizations whose interests overlap. One emerging model of collaboration is the virtual agency, where member agencies use electronic routes of communication to conduct business (James and Rykert, 1997; Hutchinson, 1999).
The BC Literacy Electronic Network and the National Adult Literacy Database bring together literacy practitioners and learners for online communication and information sharing. Some of the collaboration benefits noted in the BC case include enhanced communication within the literacy community, greater networking and information sharing, decreased isolation, smoother committee work, and lower long-distance phone bills (Hutchinson, 1999: 33). The Internet provides a robust environment for collaborative information-sharing programs between agencies.

Communities are an excellent tool for professional development
Aside from developing your own community, you should take advantage of the online communities that already exist for professionals working in the nonprofit field. These include web sites, discussion forums, newsgroups and other online programs.
Online courses in grant writing and research have been underway for several years. New resource web sites sprout up daily, offering information on everything from program evaluation techniques to volunteer screening guides. You'll find answers to questions and opinions on just about any issue when you visit a discussion list of your colleagues across the country or around the world. Professional associations are also beginning to offer online real-time links to conferences and educational sessions.
Many portal sites, such as CharityVillage, work to aggregate and filter this wide array of resources, so that you can spend your time learning and networking, instead of searching online.

What are the building blocks of online communities?
Online communities can range from simple e-mail updates to full-service web sites that offer online storefronts, personally tailored news features, chat centres and online streaming video. Most communities develop over time, starting with a few core features and building as resources permit, community members demand, and new technologies become available.
Below are some examples of these community building blocks, and a discussion of their relative strengths and weaknesses. If you need a more detailed explanation of any element, please refer to the online Glossary of Internet Terms at CharityVillage or our Online Discussion help page.

E-mail
Basic e-mail communication is a helpful way to start building an online community. Although it lacks the quality of allowing multi-layered relationships, it can still be a potent tool for forging a culture and engaging audiences. E-mail can take the form of periodic newsletters broadcast to a variety of audiences, action alerts that are campaign-specific, or one-to-one communications between community members and resource staff.
Group e-mail communication should be regular (weekly, monthly or quarterly newsletters), consistent in tone, and appropriately tailored to the audience(s). Internal newsletters to volunteers may be more informal than an update on program progress to key funding partners. Whatever tone you select for your communication, you should pay attention to feedback from your subscribers. They'll often let you know if your message is effective and useful.
E-mail is an inexpensive method of communication and it is quickly becoming commonplace both at home and in office environments. In addition, it has a relatively easy learning curve and it's a quick way to reach a large audience of existing supporters.
The main drawback of using e-mail is that it is still, essentially, a broadcast model of communication rather than an interactive one. In its own, its community building strengths are limited. It is also still confining in terms of layout and design. Because there aren't common standards for colour, images or video in e-mail, you can't yet take advantage of the multimedia options available through other online building blocks. Nevertheless, used in conjunction with other tools, broadcast e-mail can be a valuable supplement to other, more interactive, forms. You can also achieve a certain level of interactivity in broadcast publications by reprinting "letters to the editor" and information passed on by (Wilson, 1999).
If you have sufficient human resources, one-to-one e-mail can be an excellent way to develop relationships with community members. The Alzheimer Society runs an "Ask the Expert" area where visitors can submit private questions to be answered individually by an experienced Alzheimer educator. Last year, experts fielded more than 1,000 questions. As part of their answers, the experts often refer people back to sections of the web site and to local Society chapters for more information. Many users prefer not to pose some questions in person to local staff or online to a group forum. They appreciate the prompt response (replies within 48 hours) and anonymity of an Ask the Expert venue (Agger, 1999).
Aside from formal one-to-one programs, by monitoring individual e-mail trends, you'll see areas for improvement of existing online communication. People may ask the same few questions over and over. Compile these queries into an online series of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and give visitors faster access to the information. Some people will still ask the same questions, but you'll reduce the overall volume significantly.

E-mail Discussion lists
Discussion lists, usually called "listservs," enable your community members to interact with one another, as well as with your organization. Typically, participants "subscribe" to a list on a given subject. Messages sent via e-mail from one person are relayed to all other list subscribers. Subjects may be broad (e.g. literacy) or narrow (e.g. the annual silent auction). Discussions may be ongoing (e.g. human rights) or time-limited (e.g. during the annual conference). Participation may be open to anyone or limited to members approved by your organization.
Consider creating an online discussion for your organization. Clients can communicate with one another and share their experiences. Volunteers and committee members may work more efficiently by holding discussion meetings online. If your organization is spread over different geographic regions, an online discussion area can help foster a better sense of teamwork and collaboration.
Discussion lists can generate a great sense of community. List subscribers come to "know" other members through their postings, and members' personalities become evident quickly as they participate. Discussion lists are excellent places to present problems or ask questions. Undoubtedly, you'll find people facing similar challenges and those who have developed viable solutions.
There are two basic types of e-mail discussion lists, and each has strengths and weaknesses:

Moderated lists
Moderated lists have an interruption and screening process between the time the message is sent by its author and the time it is relayed to all list members. A moderator reviews all postings, based upon an agreed set of standards (although not all lists have formal screening policies). They may weed out messages that are inappropriate to the general subject of the list (e.g. offering a used car for sale on a web fundraising list), defamatory messages or those that are in conflict with the culture and tone of the list, or overtly commercial postings.
One of the benefits of a moderated list is that there is always a monitor to offer help, welcome new participants, or direct a discussion thread back onto topic. The stable presence of a moderator can also help spark discussion if interest in the subject appears to be lagging. Moderated lists, in general, give more control over community participation to your organization.
One drawback of moderated discussions is the potential for the moderator be viewed by some participants as a "big brother" overseeing the discussion and limiting participation. In general, moderators can overcome such fears by being transparent about how they will manage the list and what types of messages they will likely screen out.
Another caveat about moderated discussions is that they require more human resources than do unmoderated lists. An actual person must review each message and decide whether it should be posted to the whole list. If the discussion is particularly active, with dozens of messages per day, this can take up significant time for the moderator.

Unmoderated lists
Unmoderated lists relay messages within minutes (or daily if a timed digest option is available) to all discussion participants. No one screens message content and delivery is as efficient as the computer systems will allow.
These lists can be an equally potent tool for community building and offer a liberated environment for information exchange. Norms and values do develop on unmoderated lists where long-time participants work to maintain standards for communication. They can, however, run the danger of being monopolized by a few "regulars" who dominate discussions and cause others shy away from participating. Even if your list is unmoderated, it's a good idea to assign someone to monitor the discussion and keep an eye out for problems. You can intervene if necessary or allow the participants to work out issues themselves.
Relying too much on discussion list technology can also be dangerous. Unmoderated lists allow for more common participation errors -- 500 people can hear repeatedly that "I'm away from the office until January" every time they send a message to a list where you've subscribed. You'll also see "Get me off this list!" messages from people who don't know how to remove themselves properly from the discussion. With a moderated list, your vacation auto-reply message would simply not be forwarded to the entire list and the unsubscribe messages would be addressed by the moderator instead of the list as a whole.

Web-based discussion forums
Web-based discussion forums allow community members to ask questions, post answers or make observations on a variety of topics. Like their e-mail kin, they foster communication among community members. Web-based forums, demand slightly more active participants because they must actually visit a web site to engage in a discussion, rather than just waiting for messages to land in their e-mail in box.
To their credit, web forums are often easier to navigate and may be organized in conversation "threads," where messages are linked together by subject, rather than in chronological order. If you've been away from a discussion for a period of time, or are completely new, web forums usually make it easy to catch up quickly by reviewing archived postings from other participants.
As a communication model, many nonprofits using web forums find that they are effective tools for building relationships among community members, and between community members and the organization. Anecdotal feedback from Alzheimer Society forum participants confirms that users see the forums as an extension of in-person support groups and Society counsellors. They offer the particularly helpful aspect of being available 24 hours a day so that visitors can share their feelings in an understanding environment, even if their real support group is fast asleep or doesn't meet for another week (Agger, 1999).
Like all forms of online discussion, web-based forums require a critical mass of participants to succeed. Depending on the nature of the forum, the exact number of participants will vary. If you hope to gather broad interest in your forum, ensure that the forum interface is easy to use. The quickest way to fail is by making it too difficult for people to join the discussion.

Chat Rooms
Chat rooms, online spaces where people can communicate in real time, are popular communication vehicles for many recreational Internet users. They have not yet made their way onto many nonprofit web sites. Anonymous Sexual Abuse Recovery (Canada) and Breast Cancer Action Nova Scotia offer the two basic models for chat: IRC, an older model that requires special chat software; and web-based chat, which you can use with most regular web browsers.
Immediacy is one strong point of chat sites. Participants gain instant feedback from one another and interactions are usually conversational in tone and formality. Chat also allows people from geographically diverse areas to participate in real time interactions. This can help reduce meeting or service delivery costs, while still building a sense of localness among participants.
As the name implies, chat rooms are probably not the best forum for extensive planning or formal collaboration. They may, however, form an important supplement to other service delivery. If you offer an online course that participants take via e-mail, in addition to discussion groups via e-mail or the web, an informal chat area can help to build a sense of community among class members.

Web sites
Web sites may integrate some or all of the previously discussed community elements, as well as other features such as databases, articles, calendars, reports and more. The explosion of web sites since 1995 has been surrounded by reactions from fervent supporters and equally zealous detractors. Others in the field have already made the case for the importance of nonprofits developing a web site (Jamieson, 1998; Zeff, 1996, Grobman et al., 1999; Lake, 1996).
Properly promoted, maintained with rich and current content, supported by appropriate human resources and technology, and driven by communicators and organizational leaders, web sites offer the best opportunity to become the focal point for your online community.

Steps toward a successful online community
Community building is an incremental process and one that demands responsiveness and constant evaluation. At CharityVillage, we've been in the process of building our community for more than four years. Along the way, we've tried to both anticipate and respond to the needs of our visitors.
Doug Jamieson, the founder and president of CharityVillage, outlines a five-step progression that every visitor must be helped through as they join a community:

Attract attention with a focused, exciting and well-promoted Web site
Invite a relationship by resonating with the visitor's interests and beliefs
Engage in a dialogue about issues that are important to the visitor
Earn the right to ask for support by delivering valuable information, services or assistance
Facilitate action in the form of a join-up, purchase, donation, or some other behaviour that implies the visitor has become a community member (Jamieson, 1999).
With these steps in mind, the following section offers tips for building your community using some or all of the tools already discussed.

Inform audiences and invite relationships
Understand your audience and their needs
Just who do you want to join this online community anyway? Will it be for clients to engage with one another and your program staff? Will it be for donors to seek information and make gifts? Will it be for volunteers to collaborate with fellow committee members? In all likelihood, your community will be for a variety of audiences seeking a vast array of information and interaction.
The first step toward informing audiences and inviting relationships with them is to identify and define them. Almost invariably, your audiences will be both internal and external. Internal groups might include staff, board, clients, volunteers, donors, suppliers, members and any other group that already knows a bit about you. External audiences might include fundraising prospects, potential clients, other organizations and potential service partners, media organizations, regulators and government.
Once you've identified your key audiences, ask and answer this question for each: "What would they want from our site?" Once you've answered this question for each important audience, you'll be in a much better position to evaluate your existing online service and start building or revising it appropriately. Make no mistake, if your site doesn't offer something of value for each key audience, they may visit once, but they certainly won't return and join your community.

Keep a marketing orientation
Now that you've identified your audiences and planned to accommodate them, make marketing your orientation. People won't be able to join your virtual community if they don't know it exists. Real world marketing still drives most Internet traffic, so push your online community through existing communication channels.
By now, most organizations have included their web and e-mail addresses on stationery and business cards. This is a start, but it's too passive and can't be the only driving force behind site marketing. Use other opportunities to invite traffic to the site. The Thunder Bay Regional Arts Council uses its print newsletter to highlight new web site additions and report web traffic statistics. Other organizations pass out executive summary documents and direct interested people to their web sites for complete reports. The key is to keep reminding people about all the great stuff they'll find online.

Begin Dialogues and Invite Participation
Once you've invited a relationship with your audience, you can begin to engage them in a dialogue and invite their participation in the community. Start dialogues between your organization and its audiences, or among community members themselves. One of the most powerful uses of the Internet is its capacity to bring people together in discussion.

Create a comfortable and helpful climate
Once you've attracted people to your online community, members will want to feel comfortable visiting regularly. They must feel comfortable with the technology and with the culture of your community. Strive for clarity in communications and a friendly approach to online interaction.
Don't let technology rule your decisions online. One of the key factors that distinguishes nonprofits is a traditional emphasis on personal contact. Don't forget this online. It's easy to become overly reliant on technology (e.g. auto-reply e-mail messages) but you'll be giving up one of your most obvious and expected strengths. Don't force people to use a cumbersome discussion registration process, only to discover that there is no activity in the discussion forum anyway (probably because most people couldn't be bothered to wade through the sign-up process). Don't force them to use a complicated calendaring system to find out about the next fundraising event if you only hold two fundraisers a year.
Among weekly web users (frequent users), 51% still get frustrated online. This statistic shows that we still have much work to do in making our sites easy to use (Rousseau, 1999). Approach technology from the user's perspective. How can you give them what they want as quickly and easily as possible? Low-tech solutions often do the job, and technically sophisticated approaches should only be used when they simplify information and service delivery.
Work to create an environment that is helpful. Be responsive to direct queries. Ensure that information on your web site is current, and that e-mail broadcasts are relevant and useful. Avoid unsolicited spam. Thank participants for their suggestions, and work to integrate appropriate suggestions for improvement from community members. Seeing their ideas implemented will help to build a sense of ownership and deepen their commitment to the organization.
Engage your audience in moderated discussions with experts in your field. Invite them to participate in an online chat with your orchestra's conductor, your hospital's lead cancer researcher, or the star celebrity player of your golf tournament. Offer online postcards that they can send to friends. Create an "Ask the Expert" forum where people can seek the advice of a professional. Create a "virtual field trip" like CARE's online journey to Mali.
If you approach your online community from the user's perspective and as an extension of the services and programs you already offer, you'll be most likely to offer genuinely valuable opportunities for participation. You'll also be engaging in profitable dialogues that can offer valuable insights into your users needs and expectations.

Engage support and facilitate action
Once you've built a sense of community membership, you'll be able to convert this loyalty into supportive action. Whether it's in the form of volunteers, donations or increased program participation, you'll have earned the right to ask for help because you will have offered it.
Be sure to offer people a range of ways to participate. Just as you wouldn't send out a direct mail piece with only one donation tick box, don't assume that your community members will all want to act in the same way.
Participation ideas to benefit your organization:

Invite formal membership
Recruit and manage volunteers
Sample opinions
Ask for donations - In its first six months of accepting credit cards online, Princeton University received 500 gifts totalling more than $100,000
Look for in-kind donations
Drive traffic to your e-commerce site or affiliate program sites
Ask supporters to spread the word about the site by linking to it from their own sites
Engage people in advocacy activities

Roadblocks to community building (and how to get around them)
Access
Access is becoming less of an issue. Just as the fax machine was a luxury five years ago, Internet access will soon move from special program to standard budget line item and become another commonplace feature of most office and home environments.
Industry Canada's VolNet program is working to connect 10,000 nonprofits to the Internet by March 31, 2001. The core service package includes hardware, software, support, connectivity and training.
Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer limited free site hosting with a dial-up Internet access account. A growing number of web sites offer completely free site hosting. Most limit the size of your site, and some have notoriously slow access times, but if budget constraints are a real issue, you can still host an online presence for free.
There are plenty of free discussion forum tools available for e-mail and web-based discussions, as well as chat rooms. L-Soft's listserv, one of the most common e-mail discussion list tools, has a free version of their software for nonprofits. It's limited to 10 lists and 500 subscribers each, but that's a pretty good start for most organizations Delphi Forums offers free web-based forums, and Beseen.com hosts free chat rooms.
Electronic postcard sites are beginning to sprout up that allow you to use your own images and messages. Build-A-Card and All-Yours are two of the early examples that can help infuse some plain old fun into your site.

Skills
Without question, insufficient technology skills among nonprofit is becoming a bigger barrier than access issues alone. The "it'll be faster if I just call her" mentality is still pervasive in most organizations, as is the "spend on mission, not on machines" mindset. No doubt, this will take time to change, but change it must. To start shifting this mindset, you'll need to stop viewing technology as an add-on to your administration and start viewing it as central to fulfilling your mission.
Plan for technology in your organization. In addition to hardware, software and maintenance, budget for training so that you build your organization's capacity to use technology effectively. Funders are becoming increasingly sensitive to the need for nonprofits to keep up with the online revolution, and more foundations and government programs are supporting technology capacity building. The burgeoning high tech industry is a ripe source for volunteers and supporters who already understand the merits of solid technological skills and may be willing to donate time, services and equipment. In addition to the VolNet program, Volunteer @ction.online and the Trillium Foundation both offer programs to help build technological capacity.

Conclusion - Where to now?
Many nonprofits already have one of the biggest pieces of the online community puzzle in place: real world connections. The challenge is to extend these relationships online effectively and to reach new supporters, clients, and community members.
Start by thinking about your audience and their needs. Create an online community that is helpful and serves their needs. Invest in appropriate technologies, but be careful not forget that content is still king and technology itself is just a tool. Effective communities will engage people on a variety of levels and through multiple community elements, such as e-mail, web-based information and online discussions.
Begin sharing with visitors and invite them to participate in a range of online activities. Give before you ask. Expect that each person will approach the community with different needs and expectations. Work to accommodate people and make them feel comfortable in the community. Once they feel like genuine members of the online community, you'll be able to mobilize their support for a variety of purposes.
Start today. Concentrate on extending your mission online and you'll find that a supportive and effective community develops around you online, just as it has in the real world.

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Appendix A : Successful online community elements

Alzheimer.ca
The site hosts online discussion forums for both caregivers and professionals working in the field. An "Ask the Expert" area allows visitors to communicate with a professional one-on-one.

Arthritis Storefront
In addition to information resources for arthritis sufferers, the Society's web site includes a storefront where visitors can purchase more than 300 gadgets to help with daily living, from easy-hold cutlery to personal care items. The company that manufactures Tylenol sponsors the storefront section of the site.

CARE Virtual Field Trip
CARE, the international development organization, has created a Virtual Field Trip to Mali. The trip includes daily journal entries from CARE guides and a virtual trek throughout the country that highlights the work of the organization there. It includes text, pictures, video clips and links to related sites and books about the country.

NALD (National Adult Literacy Database)
Engages both those working in the sector with useful tools, resources and networking areas, and clients whose stories are celebrated in a weekly column, written by adult learners.

Red Cross and Axia NetMedia
The Canadian Red Cross and Axia NetMedia, an Internet applications company, are partnering to create an online certification program for Ontario boaters. New legislation requires that all boat operators in the province pass a proficiency test by 2010. The new joint program will allow boat operators to take an online course and examination to receive their certification.