(BOSTON – April 1, 2016) The first release of data from the State of Community Management 2016 survey finds that community managers who donate to charity have a higher level of community maturity than their more caffeinated peers. However, the findings show they are slightly less satisfied with their community culture than their peers. The data comes from the State of Community Management 2016 survey, which rewarded participants with either Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards or a donation to No Kid Hungry/Share Our Strength for their time commitment.
Those who donated a $5 thank you to charity were more likely than their peers to be dissatisfied with their community, according to the SOCM 2016 report.
The data show that about 33% of people who declined a $5 gift certificate to Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts in favor of a donation to Save Our Strength were unsatisfied with their community culture, while about 30 percent of Starbucks fans and just one-in-eight Dunkin’ Donuts fans shared that dissatisfaction.
“It appears that Dunkin’ Donuts-fueled community managers are a motivated group,” said Rachel Happe, co-founder of The Community Roundtable. “This finding suggests that giving to charity, while noble, might leave under-caffeinated community professionals a little cranky, and that Starbucks fans might be better served with a little more happy juice and a little less caramel swirl in their morning brew.”
Even without caffeine, those community professionals who chose charity over coffee had a slightly higher overall community maturity – and more advanced communities on The Community Roundtable’s Community Maturity Model were more likely to give to charity, too. “Let’s face it, successful community managers sleep better,” said Happe.
Dunkin’ Donuts’ New England roots showed strongly in community engagement statistics, which showed Dunkin’ Donuts-fueled communities had far lower community engagement than Starbucks-fueled or charity-inspired communities. “‘I’m great, now go the f#$% away!’ was a pretty clear message from the data,” said Happe, who added she wasn’t surprised that the Starbucks-fueled communities were the most chatty. “Wait around for 5 minutes trying to get a seat in one of those places, and it’s clear there’s a commitment to connecting and collaborating over basically anything else.”
Caffeine does play a powerful role when it comes to community response times, though – community professionals whose communities had an average time to response of less than an hour were far more likely than the average to choose a coffee gift over a charitable donation. Asked about this trend, the community managers we reached out to spoke too fast to comment on the record.
By industry, a majority of survey respondents in all but one industry area decided to give to charity rather than go for the coffee. The exception? Nonprofits. Just 30% of respondents from nonprofits passed up the free coffee. “It makes sense,” said Happe. “Most businesses spend their work hours trying to get what they can for the bottom line – so they want to give something back. The nonprofit folks figure they ought to get what’s theirs for a change. And in this case, theirs is a grande half-caff vanilla soy latte with an extra shot.”
The data cited above from the State of Community Management 2016 survey is real – but will likely not be a part of the State of Community Management 2016 report, which is due to be released in late spring. To learn more about our actual research, visit https://www.communityroundtable.com/research.
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