Nonprofit and association organizations are benefiting—at an accelerating pace—from the deployment of white label communities that boast flexible social spaces where members gather. The many forms of social spaces can be tailored to perfectly reflect your community’s activities, your organization’s goals and your members’ most compelling interests.

Social Spaces are innovative, socially-enabled places that consistently drive interaction in every type of nonprofit or association community. With Social Spaces, you can create unique gathering places that make sense for your community members. ThePort Network’s experience with Social Spaces goes far beyond the standard “social group.” ThePort’s Social Spaces not only match your constituents’ interests, they are logically linked to your organization’s fundamental objectives.

 
Chapters, Committees, Executive Officers, and Fundraising Teams are all good examples of productive, task-oriented Social Spaces. In addition, Social Spaces can be customized with unique names, descriptions, profile fields and taxonomies. As an added feature, Social Spaces can be public or private. For example, Restaurant Facility Management Association (RFMA) has created private committees within its community where designated officials interact and work on association business.

Social Spaces serve as important community hubs and attract like-minded members who can communicate, share documents, along with a variety of content. Every Social Space has its own blog, photo album, video gallery and comments that stimulate user engagement and activity.
ThePort Difference: ThePort Social Spaces is the only social media technology that lets you define and create 100% unique gathering places that make sense for your members and constituents.

In real-world use, ThePort Network clients are making the most of dynamic online destinations infused with Social Spaces activity. For example, in Sierra Club’s Climate Crossroads community, members flock to Social Spaces called Actions where they team up on specific environmental issues such as Plastics Pledge, Guerrilla Forestry and Letters to the President.

In a different type of Social Spaces use, United Church of Christ encourages members of its MyUCC community to create unique Groups that support church activities and collaboration. One group is designed for UCC clergy under the age of 40; another group, Advocates for Immigrants, dedicates its activities to promoting humane immigration reform.

Harnessing the power of geography and a sense of belonging, many Lee Enterprises’ newspaper-linked online communities make Neighborhoods prominent Social Spaces for their members. For instance, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch MySTLToday community features a landing page with over a dozen possible neighborhoods to join. The landing page is complete with display ads from local advertisers.

If you would like to learn more about the real-world benefits being realized by nonprofits and associations with online communities, please click here.

 Knowing what to expect prior to launching a white label community is essential, every step of the way. Now that you have chosen your online community provider, there is a process which takes place, beginning with your community configuration and continuing to the date of deployment. We will discuss deployment strategies in our next series’ post. Nonprofits and associations, especially, should expect the step-by-step timeline to reflect the following basic elements. Please note, however, that the complexity of the chosen platform will affect the completion of each step as well as the overall timeline.

1) Review the Project Specification Document from Your Vendor
The next step should be a detailed project specification. Look for an initial document that is in-depth yet flexible enough to incorporate critical changes. This important handoff should include a final community design mock-up.  Make sure to devote quality time to reviewing it. Carefully check the details and proposed functionality. The project specification should include feature descriptions, a timeline, along with roles and responsibilities of both parties. Sign off on the specifications and mock-up.

2) Receive the Formal Configuration Document for the Community
Approve all of the specification elements as well as module positioning, advertising scripts and url/domain name.  This is the outline for how your community will look and function when it is completed. 

3) Gather the Necessary Resources from Your Organization
Your social networking community provider should provide details on exactly which members of your team will need to be  involved in the building of your community. Most likely, members of your technical, web, and communications teams will  need to be present at minimum. These teams will need to be able to address questions around your databases, website, branding and messaging.

4) Create the Project Timeline

So that your vendor can furnish a detailed, accurate project specification, you need to think about some of your community’s critical elements:

- If your organization is implementing Single Sign On with the community, plan out the steps to procure the technical information your community supplier needs to implement single sign on. If SSO with a custom-built database is being implement, you will need a technical resource on standby to work with your social networking community provider. Utilizing management systems from a provider such as Avectra, Blackbaud, Convio or TMA Resources will expedite the process, as these systems have standard Single-Sign-On procedures and tools that can help the process move faster

-Think about the look and feel of your community. Do you want the socially-enabled side of your web presence to perfectly reflect your website, or would you prefer the community to be unique? If you are creating a new look for your community, you'll need a designer that can work with you, and you'll also need to work with your community provider to ensure the CSS of your new community reflects the updated design

 -At the least, you will need to furnish your community provider with your website's header and footer so it can be plugged into your community design

-Because your website and servers have unique DNS settings, you will need to reconfigure them to create a unique subdomain for the new community (community.yourwebsite.com). Also, decide upon an appealing domain name that reflects your community and its mission.

It is important, as you create the project plan for the community, that you have gained appropriate buy-in from all departments involved in the community and get them to commit to project deliverables.

5) Construction and Branding of the Community
Your provider will tailor the platform to your needs in terms of design, branding and functionality. This may take as little as a week or months, depending on the configuration and sophistication of your community.  Gathering all of the required information from your organization's different departments in a timely manner will improve the time-to-launch for your community.

6) Community Walk-Through Followed by Q&A
Once the community construction and design has been completed by your providers, give the community close scrutiny and a rigorous trial.  Your provider should adhere to industry-standard Q&A and testing practices before releasing your community.  Key members of your organization should also take time to test all of the different components of the community, ensure that the organization's message and branding is properly reflected, and ensure that the community's work flow will make sense to your organization's members and constituents.

7) Final Review and Acceptance
Prior to deployment, you will have the opportunity to formally review your new community. When your team is satisfied, you will be expected to sign and return an acceptance certificate.

The final step in the process is launching the community and getting your members and constituents to join the community—we'll cover this next week.

Evaluating the process of a social networking deployment can be complicated. It is our hope that these common steps will aid your research. If you would like to learn more about the real-world benefits and ROI being realized by nonprofits and associations in white label social media, please click here.