Why People Don’t Contribute In Communities
People don’t contribute because they don’t know why they should.
It’s a well recognized and commonly referred to reality. In every contribution analysis I’ve read about on the web, the percentage of frequent contributors is minute, ranging from 1-5%, while the percentage of non-contributing community members is usually the majority. Every time I read one of these, I think that most of those non-contributors aren’t community members, by my personal definition of community.
Those of us who comprehend the motivation to contribute keep trying to find a way to condense that motivation and all the reasons for it into a selling proposition for everyone else. This does not work. The only thing a selling proposition can do is motivate one specific action or behavior by answering the ‘what’s in it for me’ question. The ‘what’s in it for all of us’ question cannot and will not submit to the confines of an elevator pitch, which has no room for evolutionary processes that encompass things such as responsibility, interdependence, multi-dimensional relationships, and chains of consequences. Another motivational tool development goal I see expressed regularly is making the pitch or proposition irresistible and fun, so much fun that supposedly a brief preliminary engagement will lead to a permanent involvement/commitment. These approaches are perfectly appropriate to selling a specific product or service, but of little value in getting people to learn new things and contribute to the community.
People do contribute when they can see the whole picture.
Let’s use the example of a community fundraising or charity event, and let’s make the participants a large but informal group, rather than an organized non-profit organization with a formal corporate structure. They could be the citizens, stakeholders, and supporters of a school, town, or a church or other religious institution.
This group has identified and gathered around one common goal, typically recognized first by individual proponents who eventually fueled and spread that recognition widely enough to make it a shared or common goal. One of the activities planned for achieving that goal is a big fundraiser. Organizationally minded individuals identify the main tasks required and broadcast them, over and over if necessary, until someone finally volunteers. This volunteer will design and place ads. That one will co-ordinate kids and vehicles for the distribution of flyers. Another will be in charge of tickets and the door. And so on.
Inevitably, this informal community will have forgotten to plan a lot of little details …but that’s ok. They’re not highly organized professionals, so even more things than usual will go wrong, and that’s ok too. The community is motivated and involved. Dozens upon dozens of volunteers will be preparing the event space on the day of. Someone will realize that rental coffee cups arrived without saucers, and will react at hyper speed to deal with it no matter what it takes. Other problems will be discovered and addressed the same way. Anyone can ask for help and will get it immediately and without question. Even those without last minute crises will join the collective energy flow and contribute something unplanned …flowers in vases, perhaps. If a specialized need comes up (i.e. a toilet flooded), whoever discovered the problem goes directly to the most qualified member of the community to get it dealt with. Everyone that does something is likely to do the absolute best they can, specifically because of the level of motivation and collective energy.
The result is inspiring. None of the participants spend time asking themselves why they are doing it. If you asked them, a general answer would be that “we’re doing it for us, we’re doing it together, we’re doing it because we care”. That natural answer, though, is mostly about the personal and immediate connection. Few people would respond by describing what led them to that point of personal connection.
What, then, is the key factor in this example that created all that motivation and communal effort and collective energy and contribution?
Every person understood the same big picture.
If the goal of the fundraiser was to build something for the community, people contributed not only because there was something in it for them, but because they could see all the potential benefit, for their kids or elders or even future generations, and also because together they could accomplish something that none of them could alone.
To use a broader example, Rudy Giuliani’s implementation of the Broken Windows theory in NYC motivated citizens to fix their own windows. This was motivation by example, as powerful a communal motivation as there is, but it was the understanding of what the entire community, leaders and citizens alike, were doing together for a common benefit that everyone comprehended which really elicited community participation.
If we fervently believe that getting our community to follow a course of action, adopt new behavior, go out of their way to contribute, will result in a real measurable benefit to all, we must make that ultimate benefit, and how to achieve it, widely understood.
Then people will, and do, contribute.
We are asked a thousand times a day to do something. Buy this product. Read this article. Give to charity. The endless clamor for our attention and action is unending.
The fact is that most of us want to do something. So we buy a product, read an article, give to charity. I really believe, though, that most of us want to do something that matters. As many competing voices as there are bombarding us with calls to action, rarely if ever do we hear how we can contribute to something more important, something bigger, and something that not only will create lasting value but give our actions value as well. Doing things for others, things that those others could often do for themselves, may serve the personal needs of a few altruistic or co-dependent souls, but most of us have all we can handle taking care of ourselves and our families on a day to day basis.
Being a contributing member of a community, however, is a completely different thing. A community we belong to is larger than any one of us. It can set and achieve goals larger than any one of us can alone. The more we comprehend the big picture, and see both what can be achieved and the benefits of it to us all, the more likely we are to be motivated and contribute.
Most people wouldn’t understand big pictures and goals, you say? They don’t have enough knowledge, or education, or intelligence? As an example, think of the thousands and eventually millions of blue collar workers with rudimentary education (if that) who, after putting in grueling 12 hour days, traveled to gatherings, often at great personal risk, to learn and understand the concept and potential consequences of unionization. People don’t require a lot of formal education to understand and participate in a long term communal goal. The bigger the positive change that can be achieved, the more contribution people will make.
I don’t want to be aggregated into a mass. I do want to belong to and contribute to a community, and I want to devote my resources to things that are meaningful. There are many things that I am good at doing. Doing them for myself and for my family may be a priority, but contributing to every community I’ve been part of during my life is, for me, a way in which we make our world the best it can be.
There is such a thing as community on the internet, but I see it mostly in tech specialty areas. Business communities are mostly private for obvious reasons. Vibrant and vital special interest communities exist, but, as widely used as the term community is in describing the web these days, the number and scope of real communities is relatively very small.
Are anonymity and security issues an insurmountable barrier to many public community activities? If so, then I believe that the average person’s computer use will continue to create more human alienation than connection, and that its greatest value will remain limited to management of and access to information, as a supplemental communication aid, and to personal entertainment. Other applications of technology, including scientific and medical, promise exciting developments, but most of us are neither scientists nor medical researchers.
If real community is to be built on a larger scale on the web, then I believe that the big picture, with its entire multiple and inter relational facets, is an essential part of the foundation.
This has both nothing and everything to do with commerce and economics. Individuals and communities both, earn, raise and spend money as a natural part of some of their daily transactional activity. Here we have yet another ‘either or’. Web developers tend to focus first on either how to make money or on how to get people involved, with the intention of shifting to the second focus after the first is achieved. The result is mostly a hodgepodge, with something excellent created now and then, which usually doesn’t scale well, or something large but limited created, that is not expandable easily in more than one direction.
I’ve read the phrase, “the web is a mess”, more than once. Is it the web itself that’s a mess, or is it what people are doing and not doing on it?
December 9th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
As ruminations go, this is pretty good.
The most perverse aspect of the Web is that given sufficient motivation and time, anyone can do their own thing. So you wind up with a lot of people who are convinced they can build a better mousetrap, but lack the motivation to follow through.
From my outreach experience I can say with certainty that once a community grows beyond two people, politics become a factor - and that the advantage goes to those with both charm-in-writing and leadership skills. There are caveats that point to people who perform critical roles, of course.
…Anyway. Now seemed a good time to check in and find out how you’ve been doing. Hi!
December 10th, 2006 at 4:15 am
Hi Ben! Thanks …I’m occasionally bemused to think that the common assumption we used to make about folks talking to themselves out loud in public has been unexpectedly erased by blogging.
You’re right about politics, and I see it as a comment on self-interest vs common interest in this context. Your point about those who would normally be part of a community now doing their own thing is a good one. I persist in believing that the lack of follow through could be well addressed by more joining of forces. There’s a lot of energy and motivation, and rich ideas as well, generated by collaboration and interdependence.
Personally, I’m in the midst of one of those ‘life dumps a lot of stuff at once’ periods. Bet you can relate. Hope that things are going well down your way.