The Community Roundtable is 10 years old this spring. One of the first things we did when we started was to create the Community Maturity Model as a way to frame our view of how communities approaches develop over time.
The Community Maturity Model™ serves several critical roles. It:
- Creates shared expectations about how communities develop
- Creates a taxonomy and consistency in The Community Roundtable’s content and research
- Standardizes community discussions at a high-level so practices can be translated across use cases
- Provides a measurement framework that allows benchmarking of effective community program practices
- Gives community leaders a frame within which to innovate
We have not changed the Community Maturity Model™ in any significant way in those ten years. In the meantime, we’ve completed 10 annual research efforts and reports, hundreds of client engagements, and thousands of conversations with members of TheCR Network.
Things have changed a lot. We’ve learned a lot. It’s time for a change.
In updating the Community Maturity Model™ we were mindful that many organizations and individuals use the model and that The Community Score benchmarks against it. We do not want to upset the entire apple cart nor ruin a good thing. So we kept the fundamental structure the same – four stages and eight competencies.
The primary update, other than the look and feel, is to the descriptors that identify each competency, by stage. In the original model, these were inconsistent and informed by what was happening in the market in 2009. In studying communities and organizations for a decade, we now have a much better sense of what each of those milestones looks and feels like.
So, here it is – the updated Community Maturity framework!
Download a high-res version of the Community Maturity Model here.
Over the coming weeks, we will be sharing more thoughts about these definitions as well as updating existing resources. For now, we would like to thank the members of TheCR Network who helped us refine and think through these – changing many to better align with what they see on the ground.
Love it? Hate it? We would love to hear your feedback and discuss it with you in The Community Roundtable’s Facebook Group.
