What motivates contribution in a community project ?

From the community leader’s perspective

A community project in the article is any project that requires the efforts of several individuals, regardless the size or the type of the project. The goal here is to discuss the psychology of the community member, bring community leaders attention to this aspect and eventually get more efficiency out of the community in general.

Belonging

Belonging to a group is a psychological need, we are hard wired to live in a community, although we are no longer dependent on the tight community to survive, since this is long solved by the county, we still need that community to thrive psychologically. Its where we can continue climbing the Maslow pyramid, to the esteem and self-actualization.

From the community project perspective, if there is a real community behind it, member are happy to take part, and are keen to get involved in the project. Asking for their contribution is no asking for charity. As a leader your job is to align and guide the effort to success. Otherwise if the community is not existent or not strong, building the community for you is much easier than engaging random people. Create and increase the sense of belonging, by repeating the story that defines the community, and most importantly strengthen the members personal relationships, use social sites and organize events.

2. Social intensive

Have you ever wondered why there are several social media websites and why they are all successful ? its because we deeply care about knowing what’s going on aground us, most importantly information about individuals we personally know. As much details as we can, if its not inappropriate we would love to know everything. Its just our nature and its how we get the drive to do something in our lives, as quoted by Warren Buffett; It’s not greed that drives the world, but envy. How can this aspect be useful for a community project ?

If the outcome of community project will directly benefit those who are contributing to it, it is very easy to get new contributors. Simply by making that benefit look clear from outside, and showing to potential contributors, who are the people that will be getting this advantage after the project is done, preferably show them individuals they personally know. The idea is to trigger an envy kind of motivation. If the project outcome does not directly benefit the contributors, your best bet is to search for what make your contributors look cool in the eyes of their peers, that would be the individual benefit that can trigger desire.

3. Recognition

For any person, whatever community gives the most recognition and sense of belonging is the what we finally identify with, even if there is a major misalignment in interest. That sense of being important between a group of people is very powerful, many people are able to change their own interest in order to keep having that position.

Each community member want to know that: “everyone is aware that I am here”, therefore there should be areal network between members, with real relationships. Most communities tend to be shaped around existing hubs like families, residence places and work places, the other kinds of communities are fewer and are the ones that succeed in bring different people together and create real connections between them.

The next thing each community member want to be certain about is, “My contribution to this community is very important”. It should be very obvious if there is only one type of contribution, but in a strong community, members can contribute in all aspects, ideas, labor, bringing attention, engaging of other members… The community leader has the task of recognizing the importance of each member, and make it obvious to others.

I am a Hero

4. Trust

To a certain extent, most people get in a inner negotiation when they are asked to donate, even for something they already support, and some where during that negotiation, pops the question “Q1. Is my donation really important ?” and the question “Q2. How do I know my money will be used they way I wish it would be used?”. The answer to these questions will determine whether there will be a donation, and the size of their contribution.

As a community project leader, its important to help them answer those question, but since its an inner question, your explanations will only take to a certain point. What can go farther is the other inner side that is trying to answer those questions.

A1. Show them transparently the whole donation data so that they can certainly know that their donation is very important.

A2. Involve every contributor in the process of deciding how the fund should be used, and let them know that they can take part in that decision.

5. Engagement

Most community projects get started by very few people, they usually come up with the idea, then go around generating interest from the rest of the community for the goal to fundraising, and finally use the fund to either generate more interest or go realize the project. Although there is nothing wrong about this process, it is highly focused on the project and tend to sum-up community member’s role to just donation.

The mentality behind this process is : “If we realize this project, it will make our community better”. This requires a lot of efforts to convince people that the project is in fact what they need and its worth it. If you did this, you might have noticed that its relatively easy to convince people that already trust you/you have a strong social connection with. It’s because from their perspective, they may contribute even though they are not totally convinced, and they will be getting a psychological reward anyway in a form of reciprocity or social bonding.

How ever, leader with the mentality: “ We make our community better though realizing this project”, find it more easy to bring contribution by focusing equally on accomplishing of the project and the short term community well being. Thinking that the project is an opportunity to allow many people to have a sense of belonging and accomplishment, and giving individual recognition to each member, a moment of psychological thrive.

From the contributor’s perspective, those feelings are the psychological reward that they will be getting regardless of the project outcome. However this can only be accomplished by giving the community members more important roles than just donation, and most importantly engaging them very early from the idea creation stage.

A side effect here is the IKEA effect, which is: “We feel strongly attached to things that we invest our time and labor in, we even tend to value them higher than the ones easily obtained”. This suggest that, giving community members tasks and responsibilities will eventually create a stronger sense of attachment in the community and higher motivation for project success.

CHECK OUT the where this article was originally published:

https://eyenbros.com/messages/content_thread/5cd9e2a0-0af0-46bf-986d-d70f4232ed69/