Thread by @RichMillington

Right now every community strategist should be preparing for the coming recession. If the pandemic is the earthquake, the recession will be the tsunami for us. This means planning for a sharp and sudden drop in your budget.

A few example scenarios: #CMGR

Scenario 1: A budget cut of 25%.

Smaller team - thus closing ideation, events/activities, and slower speed of moderation/post approval. Likely small drop in participation. No more budget for platform development, staff training, event attendance etc...

Scenario 2: A budget cut of 50%

Community team cut in half. No time for events, ideation, platform updates, member giveaways, or rewards for MVP program. Slower moderation. No ability to fix technical bugs. Sig. drop in participation and satisfaction.

Scenario 3: A budget cut of 75%

Team is cut to just you to reply to discussions/posts, firefight platform issues, and support MVP program as best you can. Pressure to move to cheaper platform when contract expires. Big drop in participation.

Each of these scenarios has second and third order impacts. Slower time to moderation means less happy members means lower participation means even slower participation etc...No ideation means less things for members to do etc.

A good rule here is don't try to do the same amount of work with less resources. Cut what you're trying to do to focus on the things which really matter and keep things ticking over.

This is all about prioritisation. We teach in our course to cost and prioritise every single tactic. So when the budget is cut you can easily cut the tactics until you have what you need. I'm betting most community strategies (if they exist) aren't costed let alone prioritised.

We're going to learn it's a lot easier to grow a community in a booming economy with rising resources than one in recession where we need to make painful cuts.

But this is where the good community strategists will shine.

It's time to get planning folks, it's going to be rough.