Communities

One of the main reasons members join your association is to take advantage of the networking opportunities. But not everyone can attend face-to-face meetings. You can provide significant value to your members by giving them a place to interact online, in a branded part of your website.

ISGweb lets you address the needs of two very different types of association communities:

• Loosely managed, self-selected communities of interest (SIGs, hot topics, listservs)
  These interest groups can arise and evolve over time, directed by the participants themselves, independent of association leadership. Members of the association can choose to join or quit at any time, and they can participate with or without a moderator. This type of community is valued by association members precisely because it is not controlled, and offers members the opportunity to participate at will without requiring long-term commitment.

• Formal association groups (chapters and committees)
  Association chapters and committees offer members the benefits of community through formally defined products and services, such as scheduled courses and meetings. Association staff control setup of these groups and appointment of group leaders, and participation is restricted to those who have paid dues or been approved as members. Online activities are carried out within a more structured environment, and under the guidance of association leadership.

The Communities module consists of four components: My Communities, Community Management, Community Forums, and Community Setup.

My Communities
All users can login to their own centralized portal, where they have links to:

• View and edit their member profile, login and contact information,

• Access items in their current shopping cart,

• Download documents that have been ordered in the past,

• View at a glance all association subgroups to which they belong,

• Access the Community Forum for any communities in which they are eligible to participate,

• Access the Community Management form.

Community Management
The Community Management page lists all the communities that the user is a member of, or can voluntarily join.

• Joining or leaving a community is as simple as clicking on a box next to the community name.

• Join and opt-out activities are automatically logged in iMIS.

• System-generated notifications are sent to the user upon joining or leaving communities.

• Links on the My Communities page are updated in real time to reflect changes made via Community Management.

• Communities that the member is not eligible to join or opt out of may be omitted from the list or shown without an active checkbox.

Community Forums
ISGweb provides all the capabilities of the best listservs plus other features found only here:

• Listserv - Group members can interact directly via e-mail, posting and responding to messages without having to go online or log into the community site.

• Upload documents - Post shared documents as community resources and attachments; link to documents from discussion items and organize documents in multiple-level folders.

• Online discussion forums - View discussion threads online, view most recent postings across categories, respond to topics, and create new topics.
  • Search community postings - Search for documents and discussion items by keyword or category, or search by multiple attributes such as author and date, using advanced search.

• Online chat - Chat rooms offer instant messaging for selected members of the community. Chats can be open or moderated, where a moderator can manage the interactions and save a history of the discussion.

• Private, invitation-only discussions - Users can create subgroups within a community and invite specific individuals to participate.

• Instant polls - Post polls and simple, multiple-choice surveys and share the results.

• Broadcast announcements - Community administrators can send broadcast e-mails to an entire community or any identified subgroup.

• Administrator features - Your staff can manage the communities and track community statistics with an array of administrative reports. Users can also manage their own profiles and preferences.

Community Setup
The Community Setup wizard allows association staff to set up communities and their forums.

• Create new communities and map them to existing membership groups within your iMIS database, such as committees, SIGs, and chapters.

• Members can be automatically enrolled in a community based on the roster of any chapter, committee, event, subscription, member type, activity—in fact, using any criteria that can be defined in terms of a query on iMIS data.

• Eligibility for joining certain communities can be defined during setup.

• Individuals can be designated to play certain roles in the community, serving as administrators, moderators, or as invited participants, whether or not they fit the criteria for automatic enrollment.

Links to more information about ISGweb for iMIS:
Fact sheet (PDF, 1.05 MB)
ISGweb for iMIS FAQ
ISGweb architecture
The On Demand option

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