I keep being asked this question.

Not surprising really, since I go on about community a lot. And perhaps not surprising because it’s one of those culturally familiar, but rarely examined ideas like fairness, or even democracy. It’s a comforting, but somewhat vague concept, one that’s used frequently by all of us, and relentlessly by politicians (who tend to use it as an easily grabbed motherhood, guaranteed to legitimize any worldview). Unless you’re a sociologist, you’re unlikely to have spent much time thinking about what community really means. And what it takes to make one.

But perhaps it’s time to do it now.

Community is making a comeback. We have a self-confessed Community Leader in the White House. Data shows a climbing desire for more contact with neighbors and more time with the family.

Rugged individualism as a culturally defining idea (whether your preferred symbol is the Marlboro man or the survival-of-the-fittest Gordon Geckos of Wall St.) may indeed be central part of the national character. But it has eclipsed, to our cost, the equally defining, and interestingly juxtaposed idea of every American as a member of a vigorous community…something seen as uniquely American by a French man, no less: De Tocqueville.

Whatever the reason, I keep being asked to define community. So, based largely on the hundreds of interviews I conducted very self-conscious communities (like cults and religions) as well as those that are less so (like chess playing clubs and some neighborhoods) here’s my take.

Communities hold things in common.

They could be needs, like a cancer survivors’ groups or new-in-town social clubs. They could be ideologies if the community is a religion or political party. It could be proximity if it’s a neighborhood. Or a cause if it’s a movement, fighting, say, for the environment or against human slavery. Or it could be interests like opera, Nascar or technology. Whatever they are, their members align themselves with those who share these things in common.

But I think this begs a bigger and more interesting question: does the nature of the thing that’s shared predispose a community to be stronger or weaker?

Is a shared ideology inherently stickier than a shared hobby?

I would argue yes, it is. Beliefs not only tend to trump facts, and values trump policy arguments, but they also tend to beat other kinds of commonality in the ability to generate glue.

An alignment around more government or less government, around a personal God or atheism, or even around being an American or a Frenchman (because they’re particular national ideas that are packed with ideology), is a stronger alignment than being a chess player or even a neighborhood resident.

Of course there are qualifiers to this, which I’ll talk about in a moment. But I’ve seen ideology forming the strongest glue for this key reason: its ingredients…values and beliefs, a shared vision of how the world should be…are also the ingredients of self-definition at the most profound level. Being a born-again Christian or Sufi is normally central to a person’s idea of themselves. So is being a conservative or a liberal. Imagining a world where women and men are equal or race is irrelevant is more self-defining than if you’re an opera lover or you happen to live Manchester.

If people share self-definition at the level of beliefs, values and hopes, that makes for an extremely strong community. If I identify with the group because, in the final analysis, we say the same things about what makes us who we are as individuals, that’s a bond that’s pretty tough to break a part.

There is another factor that cannot be ignored in an analysis of what makes a strong community. Mix in this, and you can take a lower order commonality to a higher degree of stickiness.

The other thing that’s critical to community is contact.

Those communities that have more interaction between their members tend to be stronger than those that have less. Community is a contact sport at the end of the day. There is a ton of data that is in agreement with my own research that rubbing people together makes people sticky.

We found at Meetup that if people attended four or more events, whatever the purpose of the group, they tended to be more committed than those who attended less. And the primary cause of that stickiness was that four attendances was the minimum number of times it took for relationships to form, and for people to say to themselves things like “I like these people. Some of them could be good friends. I’m coming back not just because I want to be a better knitter, but because I want to hang out with Sean and Jessica”.

If you have a community that’s ideologically based and it has frequent contact between its members, then of course that’s the strongest formula of all.

I’m fascinated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) because they’ve cracked this code. They get both right. Their ideology is highly distinctive (so much so that it is seen as heretical by the established Christian denominations). And they have mandated contact between members to a much higher degree than other Christian churches and several other religions.

There are very few paid clergy in the Church. The work of running this global organization, from HQ to a local ‘ward’ is done primarily by its members, massively increasing opportunities for interaction. They don’t just meet at church on Sunday either. There is a rigorously applied program of contact that accounts for most days of the week. For example, whether in Bangkok or Birmingham, Mormon families meet on a Monday night for Family Home Evening. The Relief Society (a Mormon woman’s organization) drops in to give spiritual and temporal assistance. Home visits are undertaken to families to teach the gospel at least once a month.

Can you make communities stickier if they’re founded on lower-order commonalities?

Yes, if you amp-up ideological alignment. And, for bonus points, increase interaction too.

Where proximity was not enough, competing visions for a town’s future created the missing glue between individuals in a town in upstate New York.

My friend Sam Pratt helped lead its fight against the building of the world’s largest cement plant in its historical location. This external threat…or opportunity, depending on your point of view…surfaced ideologies and radicalized populations that had been dormant for decades in this sleepy Hudson River town.

This external stimulus clarified beliefs and crystallized needs within two distinct populations in the city. The more recent arrivals from New York City who had led the revival of the main street with shops, cafes and galleries were not surprisingly, galvanized around the idea of preserving what had been done to reinvent ‘local’ community. In contrast, the population that had been there for generations and lived through the booms and busts saw the plant as an opportunity for jobs and tax income to help pull the town, once again, out of the economic doldrums.

These populations clustered around differing worldviews of what constitutes community, the virtues or threats of globalization, the role of corporations, the localization movement and classic blue and red political ideologies.

The fight was fierce. But the ‘Stop the Plant’ side won, and they won famously. There will be more on how it pulled it off on The Glue Project. It’s an instructive story about how community can work when it has to…and I’ll write it with the help of Sam Pratt. But in summary, the winning side prevailed through a combination of very skillful ideological management, relentless energy and lots of interaction between its members.

So, a community is a population that shares things in common, whether they’re online, offline, local or global and whether the thing that’s shared is an interest, cause, need, passion, proximity or ideology.

I would argue the thing that’s shared is a determinant of the strength of the community, with the proviso that the degree of member interaction plays a huge part in the degree of stickiness.

This is a big and emotive subject.

What do you think community is?

Not a religious one. The kind of vision that will keep two entrepreneurs in a small town on the banks of the Hudson River.

Two nights ago, my friend and his partner were pissed off. They’d moved from the city to relocate their design business in a beautiful town in upstate New York. It’s the kind of beautiful town that could be really be beautiful, and functional, and even moderately wealthy instead of teetering between resurgence and decline. Like most towns on the river, its fortunes sunk when the highway opened, river traffic stopped, tourism to the Catskills dried up and industry left. But like some of these towns, they’re enjoying a renaissance as their neglected beauty is being discovered and dusted off.

That means people like my friend are investing their money and time trying to make Main St. work again. Restaurants, stores and artisan workshops are cropping up to complement the inevitable Wal-Mart Mall on the edge of town, with opportunities for discretionary income to be spent and Main Street to be repopulated.

In other words, making the barely-beating heart of the town function again. You know, revive the traditional form of community that people crave so much. Make Main Street real instead a fantasy experience in Disneyworld.

But the town leadership has vacillated, obfuscated and dithered. They can’t decide whether to be the depressingly familiar, hollow, Wal-Mart-centric collection of suburbs or a historic town making a comeback. One that’s joining the movement for localism and new authentic industry that’s reinventing the Hudson Valley. One that has a diversity of businesses, population, entertainment…and tax revenue.

So my friends and many others are deciding to leave. Without knowing that their and their neighbors’ investment (not just of money, but in friendships and enthusiasm) is going to pay back because it’s being channeled to a common vision with resources to support it, why stay? Why not go to a town that’s clear about what it is and where it’s going, with a citizenry that helps each other get there and with incentives to make the tough life of running a small business worthwhile?

A vision would make all the difference in taking a community that’s stagnating into one that’s generating energy and producing happiness. Forget a cave in Lourdes. The people need a vision for Main Street.

At the heart of every successful organization is a clear purpose. It’s the thing that the founder starts with. It’s what successful organizations use for big and small decisions alike, often for decades afterwards.

Religion or corporation, online support network or cupcake enthusiast group, all communities do better when they…their leaders, their members, their potential recruits and the world at large…are very clear about:

• What the organization is here to do
• The beliefs and values it executes against
• And therefore, what is expected of its membership.

Without one, the community is rudderless. It may potter along, but it won’t be truly great.

I like this quote from a famous business book. Even in the world of commerce a Purpose, Ideology, Mission/Vision, call it what you will, is considered vital to an organization’s success:

“Like the fundamental ideal of a great nation, church, school, or any other enduring institution, core ideology in a visionary company is a set of basic precepts that plant a fixed stake in the ground: ‘This is who we are; this is what we stand for; this is what we’re all about.’ …core ideology is so fundamental to the institution that it changes seldom, if ever.” (Jim Collins & Jerry Porras, Built To Last)

So who consumes a Purpose? Why do they need or want it? And therefore, what goes into one? And when you have one, what do you do with it? And…what does one look like?

They can take many forms; some of them are very familiar. It may be a book: the Bible, the Koran or The Little Red Book. Or a speech: MLK’s “I have a Dream”. Or a Declaration of Independence. Or Constitution.

All of these have a vision of the how the world should be. They’re crystal clear about the values of the community, and are explicit about expected behavior. They’re used as a lodestone for making decisions that affect the fortunes of the community. They’re a statement of why you should join, commit and take action.

Most importantly, they define the community to itself and to others, whether it’s a nation, a religion, a movement or a political party.

Of course most Purposes or Ideologies are not famous, not as poetic or define things like countries. They can often be found on About pages or coffee mugs. They’re often statements about the group’s goals, what they stand for and who should join. But if they’re good, and they’re used, then they’ll do the exact same things that the intimidating famous ones do.

Let’s talk first about the consumers of a Purpose, and why they need or want one. That’ll help define what goes into one, and what you do with it.

By the way, I’m using the term ‘Purpose’ as a catch-all for Ideology, Belief System, Mission and so on. Each of these may have slight differences, but really they serve similar enough needs and are used in similar enough ways.

The Consumers of a Purpose.
There are at least four:

1. The Membership.
Arguably these are the most important consumers of an ideology.

If it’s well conceived, the benefit is Commitment. And with commitment comes the associated benefits of conviction, energy, involvement, motivation to recruit others, and willingness to take action.

2. The Leadership.
The key benefit for the leadership is clarity. Making fast and effective decisions obviously improves the efficiency of the organization, especially large and complex ones.

There’s a drag on decision-making when it has to be prefaced by yet another debate about the organization’s role and values. When they’re universally known and embraced, then decisions about strategy, next steps, who belongs and who doesn’t happen fast and with buy-in.

3. Potential Members
Potential recruits need to know why they’re joining and what’s expected of them if they do. They need to be able to say things like “those values are mine. I’ll feel at home there”, and “I love what this community is out to create. I want to join”.

If a prospect knows what they are getting into and is clear whether they identify with the community, or not, then they’ll join and stay. And you’ll spend less time dealing with the members who really shouldn’t be there, the ones who can make the community and themselves less happy and effective

4. The world at large.
If the community is begins to have an impact, it means it’s rubbing up against the world at large. Beyond recruits, those outside of the community need to understand what you’re about. They could be potential partners or sponsors. They might the media. Or government agencies.

The benefits are dependent on who’s engaging with your group, but they can include clarity about compatibility, whether commercially, politically or in terms of goals if it’s an organization with whom you’re entering into an alliance. Or ease of communication if it’s media who need sound-bite definitions.

Can you think of other consumers of your organization’s Purpose? How does your organization use one? Comment or go to the community site and post on the blog.

It may seem trite to have a list of ingredients. We’re talking about high-functioning communities here, not a sponge cake.

But over and over, the same motivations, techniques and principles emerged as I talked to members and leaders of successful communities. You really can identify the key ingredients that are essential to making strong social glue.

What follows is no more than a list. I’ll be covering each ingredient in much more detail and they’ll be illustrated with examples from real communities.

And this list is not exhaustive. If you think there are other key ingredients, then please go to the community section of the site and start a forum or group to discuss them, or write about them on the community blog. Or comment on this blog.

The more cooks in the kitchen, the better!

So far, I’m up to twenty ingredients. Here’s a summary of the first, and arguably, most important five.

1.  What’s your Purpose?
You can call it a Purpose, a Worldview, Ideology, Belief System, a Creed, Values, Vision, Mission, whatever. If a group doesn’t have one, potential recruits won’t know what they’ll get if they join. You and your members won’t have a clear mission that defines the group’s behavior. There wont’ be a values or belief system that the community shares, identifies with and becomes wedded to. And you’ll be fuzzy about whom you recruit and reject…and eject (all equally important in maintaining the integrity of the community).

2.  Make Love.
As important as a Purpose or Ideology is to a successful community, Love is more so. Purpose and Love are the two critical ingredients (like eggs and sugar in a cake).

But Love trumps Ideas.

People join and stay in communities primarily for the people, not the belief system or worldview (no-matter what they might say). It’s not the word of god, or the political manifesto, or the mission or values that’s the primary reason for joining and staying. It’s the other members.

This was an insight I gained from talking to members of cults and cult-like communities. And it was confirmed when I went to Meetup and we researched the key reasons for becoming committed to a group.

We found that it was after attending four of five events that people felt as if they truly belonged. At that point the connection they felt with the other members transcended (but not replaced) the original purpose for joining the community. It was the other people that became the reason to stay. So, welcome new members and introduce them to others. Create lots of opportunities for interaction…

3.  Rub people together.
Community is a contact sport. The more people rub together, the stickier they become.

If people interact frequently with others who share the same interests, causes and values, enduring relationships will occur. This is true for both virtual and real communities, but is more effective in face-to-face groups where two things are at play: a) the investment people have made to show up is often translated to investment in the future of the community, b) all the unconscious forms of communication that research is proving to be so important…body language, facial expression, voice intonation, laughter…get a chance to work in a way that is not possible, or is seriously compromised when online.

4.  Create a Safe Space.
This is not about protection from attack or harm (although it can be). It’s about creating what people often call a ‘safe space’ to be themselves. This is a huge, and I would argue, the most important emotional benefit received from belonging.

It happens when people feel that they are amongst ‘like-others’. They can relax and be themselves without fear of censure that they might get in environments where they can’t choose the others around them (such as their workspace or school). The ability to self-actualize is a huge motivation to join and stay in a community. Given this is most likely to happen when surrounded by ‘like-others’, having a safe space is highly dependent on having the ‘right’ members.

5.  Get the Right Members
There are right and wrong members. Frankly, not everyone should be welcome.

For people to feel at home and be themselves, to interact happily and to get what they need from the other members, to feel like they truly belong, to recruit successfully, the community must have the right members.

What makes a member right or wrong? The right ones are those that agree with and support the Purpose and values of the group. They’re the ones who contribute and show up. The wrong ones are the flakes, the passengers, the ones who are in the wrong place because they don’t really buy into the mission of the community. They’re the detractors (constructive criticism is good, undermining is not).