What is a Community Manager, Anyways?

I didn’t realize until I was in the job of Community Manager that this position actually goes back a ways in human history. Getting people together, making folks feel heard, working towards common goals, those sorts of things. And for me, I feel like I’ve been doing some form of community management since I started my career in Social Work. I was doing very similar things: getting people together, making folks feel heard, working towards a common goal. But when I started my first official Community Management job, people close to me asked the same thing: “what does a Community Manager do?”

It’s taken me this long, but I think I understand what a Community Manager is to me. Community Management has been what I have been doing my whole career so far, even. Beyond the vague job descriptions, more real than the back-of-the napkin vision that I was given, I think I have boiled down my own definition of Community Manager.

Connecting Individuals

In 2016, I graduated college with a Bachelors of Arts in Social Welfare with a job in-hand and the mission to make a difference in the world. This job was a Case Manager position connecting youth in foster care to resources and eliminate barriers to independence. It was an issue near and dear to my heart with a nonprofit that I believed in.

Sure, I’d most likely have to work two jobs and sure, I’d take my work home with me, but I wanted to make a difference. Honestly, it was a great experience and allowed me to work alongside youth to become independent. And along the way, I organized resource events, worked in a group of community members to create a support network, and supported a community drop-in center all as means to reducing barriers for my young adults to succeed.

I did that for a couple years before I wanted to find a new way to work with people. Something that let me connect folks to each other with a common shared goal to do good things…

A different kind of community

I was a fundraiser after being a case manager… Well, a Development Associate to make me seem more important. I was raising money for an organization and using the experiences from being a case manager to do it. It also meant I did a lot of events.

From conferences, to annual fundraising campaigns, to actual events. It was fun. It was stressful. It was also scary, because not only was I swapping out working with people I could empathize with to bumping elbows with rich folks, very early on I was told by some fundraisers who had worked at this organization a while back, “oh, they’re gonna throw you to the wolves and use you for what you’re worth.” Cooooooolllll, that’s terrifying but it can’t be that bad, could it?

(Narrator: it was.)

But before that finally burned me out and I left that organization, I became a Community (Growth) Manager and I got a new boss.

The New Boss

My department got a new director about eight months after I had started my fundraising position, and by that time I had already gained a team, lost a boss, became responsible for the lion’s share of not one, but two, fundraising events, along with a portion of an annual campaign, and supporting an acquisition of a local organization.The first day this director started was the day of the second fundraising event and it was a memorable first day. As we started to admit guests, I was running around in a frenzy (y’all who do events know the feeling), and our registration table was having troubles. Without hesitating, my new boss rolls up their sleeves and jumps in to support; talk about a way to start off on the right foot as a new employee, but the wrong foot of someone trying to show their new boss they have it handled.

Fostering transformative relationships

G would end up being my favorite boss of all time (a BOAT, if you will). G was radically authentic and dared us to do the same; we cried during meetings when shootings and violence happened, laughed at the embarrassing human experiences that happened, and we shared our whole selves in a way that allowed us to support each other. And in terms of the work, G was a visionary that wanted to flip our profession on its head, shifting the way we viewed philanthropy from transactions (you give, we thank) to transformations (we do this together in the ways we are best at to make this happen).

I was immediately sold, and G introduced my new title as “Community Growth Manager,” complete with a nice little pay boost. It was going to be the cutting edge position of philanthropy in nonprofits and really change the game. And after a bit of chaos, I was ready for some clarity.

Unfortunately, my boss never got to fully realize the vision as an unhealthy work environment forced them out not six months later– it was a whole thing. But I still had the title, a job description as clear as mud without the mind behind it, and a vision that I had been painted by someone I still am in contact with and a standard in which I hold my supervisors to. So I did what I could to harness this new position to do good work and build my job into something I enjoyed doing.

Collective Impact

During the time after G left, I focused on stewarding donors through relationship building and the annual giving campaign. I co-created a digital events team to make webinars and community events which was really cool. We got to do panels and webinars about mental health and health equity which I geeked out on. We also built an equity side of our organization to rebuild our programs to better serve everyone. It truly was a great time in terms of living the vision I had in my mind of what a Community Manager did: working as a group to do better for everyone.

So, what is a Community Manager?

At the end of the day, I know I am a Community Manager because I connect individuals, foster transformative relationships, and believe in collective impact. Kind of like what I mentioned about historical community management, but with more fancy words.

But now I pose it to you, dear readers: what is a Community Manager to you? Do you agree with my interpretation, or do you find other parts define Community Manager better? Let me know, I would love to hear your thoughts.

And if you’re new like me, sign up for our newsletter. I particularly liked our Community Manager Handbook email but let me know if there’s anything that particularly resonated with you.