The Community Roundtable

Empowering global community leaders with research-backed resources, training, and tools.

  • About Us
    • Our Values
    • Our Team
    • Our Clients
      • Client Success Stories
    • Community Leadership Awards
      • Community Leadership Awards 2024
      • Community Leadership Awards 2023
      • Community Leadership Awards 2022
      • Community Leadership Awards 2021
  • Services
    • Benchmarking and Audits
      • Community Performance Benchmark
      • Community Readiness Audits
      • Community ROI Calculator
      • The Community Score
    • Models and Frameworks
      • Community Maturity Model™
      • Community Engagement Framework™
      • Community Skills Framework™
      • Community Technology Framework™
      • The Social Executive
  • Research
    • The State of Community Management
      • SOCM 2024
      • SOCM 2023
      • SOCM 2022
      • SOCM 2021
      • SOCM 2020
    • Community Careers and Compensation
    • The Community Manager Handbook
      • 2022 Edition
      • 2015 Edition
    • The Social Executive
    • Special Reports
    • Case Studies
  • Events
    • Connect
      • Connect 2024
      • Connect 2023
      • Connect 2022
    • Community Technology Summit
    • Professional Development
    • Resource Bundles
    • Upcoming Events
    • Community Manager Appreciation Day
      • Community Manager Appreciation Day 2025
      • Community Manager Appreciation Day 2024
  • I’m looking for…
    • Community Engagement Resources
    • Executive Support Resources
    • Community Reporting Resources
    • Platform and Technology Resources
    • Community Strategy Resources
    • Community Programming Resources
    • Community Career Resources
    • Something Else
      • Vendor Resource Center
      • Community FAQs
      • Community Management Podcasts
        • Community Conversations
        • Lessons From The NEW Community Manager Handbook
      • Community 101
        • Community Management Glossary
        • Community Management FAQs
      • Case Studies
      • Community Webinars
  • Community
    • The Network
      • Member Login
      • Join The Network
      • Roundtable Call Library
    • The Library
      • Subscriber Login
      • Subscribe to The Library
  • Blog

Thanking it Forward – Fostering an Attitude of Gratitude

December 4, 2013 By Rachel Happe

By Rachel Happe, Co-founder of The Community Roundtable

At The Community Roundtable we like to celebrate Thanksgiving instead of other end of the year celebrations. It both fits our ethos of articulating our thanks and it better fosters a sense of community than any gift ever could. We’ve been using the #ThankItForward tag to encourage our community to thank those that have made a positive impact on their lives this year. For TheCR team everyone on the team has the name of one other team member and a check to spend on thanking that person in whatever way they choose.

Personally, the #ThankItForward challenge is daunting to me – to pick just three individuals is nearly impossible. I feel literally overwhelmed with support, inspiration and friendship from so many people. It is an embarrassment of riches that is both amazingly gratifying and sometimes a bit confounding – at least to me. There are some people and things that stood out this year, however, in no particular order:

  • J.J. Lovett who asked me to edit his book with Margaret Brooks and Sam Creek, Developing B2B Social Communities.
  • Claire Flanagan who has continually advocated on behalf of The Community Roundtable and encouraged me personally, culminating in a partnership with Jive this year.
  • CheeChin Liew and Marlene Wolf who saw potential to extend the work that we do and supported that effort.
  • Sandy Carter for her support and advocacy of my work.
  • David Carr who included our research and work in Social Collaboration for Dummies.
  • Maria Ogneva who has so willingly and openly shared and collaborated to move the community management discipline forward.
  • Ted Hopton who supported and enabled us to write the UBM Case study.
  • TheCR Team – Jim, Hillary, Maggie, Jillian, Shannon and Leanne all make the work we do amazing. They surprise and delight me often and I couldn’t ask for a better team with whom to work.
  • Sue Feldman who has supported me since I worked for her at IDC and continues to mentor me. I learned from her that it is initially more important to focus on having interesting conversations than what I’m trying to get out of an interaction. If you do that, business will follow. She was right.
  • Bill Synder – someone I hardly know and yet, through one conversation, let me see my work in an entirely new way with an implicit assumption of its potential value in a whole new area and for Mark Bonchek who made that conversation possible.
  • CV Harquail who is generous with her expertise and continues to prod in ways that make me re-think our potential and what we do.
  • TheCR Network members, who collaborate with each other, rally around each other and are committed to making the work that we all do more meaningful.
  • TheCR clients who collaborate with us to deliver results for their organizations. We are very fortunate to have client relationships that have never felt like transactions.
  • My husband, Ted McEnroe, who I like to think of as both my personal partner but also as an investor in The Community Roundtable who has exhibited unwavering support of the work I do, despite its small and large impacts on his life.

Not included in this list are the hundreds of people who have made introductions, riffed off and added to our work, advocated for what we are doing, contributed to events and discussions, become clients or members, invited me to events and generally helped nudge my success along.

As TheCR has grown, I’ve realized that while it’s taken a lot of work for a few people, it has also taken a little work from a great many people. One of the things that I am most proud of is that we’ve collaborated with our community to advance the discipline of community management and while The Community Roundtable is doing well, our ultimate goal is to enable the success of those in our community and that is and will be the true measure of our success.

Thanks to all of you for interesting conversations – here’s to more of them!

About Rachel Happe

comments powered by Disqus
Community best practices

Resources for the people who build online communities.

ABOUT US
Our Values
Our Team
Our Clients
Careers

RESOURCES
Vendor Resource Center
Podcasts 
Community 101
Case Studies
Webinars

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Benchmarking and Audits
Models and Frameworks
Research
Professional Development

QUICK LINKS
Blog
Newsletter
About The Network
About The Library
About The Academy

LOGIN
The Network
The Library
The Academy

Contact
Support
Partnership
Inquiries
Subscribe to
Our Newsletter