Small and Smart

There are a variety of ways to encourage your members to be a part of your online microcommunity. Last year, the Cornerstone League identified a simple one: Don’t ask members to pay for the privilege.

Cornerstone League is a trade association representing credit unions in Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, and Oklahoma. It had gone through a series of restructurings and mergers that were completed in 2023, which included online communities for its various council groups dedicated to different parts of credit union operations. Previously, Cornerstone had members pay an annual $25 fee for group access. After the merger, it changed tactics and decided to treat it as a member benefit.

“We thought, ‘Let’s rip that barrier off,’” says Cornerstone League VP of Operations and Engagement Sarah Bowman. “The Kansas and Missouri credit unions [whose group had merged with Cornerstone] are not used to paying that. It’s not like we were dependent on that income.”

With the groups established and the additional price tag removed, the association could focus more on supporting the individual parts of the association’s communities and launched new ones for young professionals and CEOs. To stoke engagement, Bowman says, the association asks each community to produce a number of “virtual engagement opportunities” such as webinars, alongside topical discussions. “We’re connectors, we’re the place that facilitates cooperation among the cooperatives, so this gives us another means to connect,” Bowman says.

Post-COVID Growth

Online communities, like those run by the Cornerstone League, have played an increasingly substantial role in an association’s operations since the COVID-19 pandemic prompted members to move their connections online.

“Before COVID, there wasn’t really too much engagement in that area of the application,” says Davendra Raghubir, project manager for AMO, an AMS platform. “A lot of stuff for associations were always in person. Once COVID happened, all of a sudden, I was getting requests every single week, people asking us about our group system.”

Carrie Hartin, president of MCI USA, an association consultancy, says that for many associations those communities have become places where members can discuss issues with more immediacy and flexibility.

“In places where it’s been harder for members to discuss more timely issues, those microcommunities have had a lot of purpose,” Hartin says.