Key features:

• Big, fast-growing, active community.
• Mostly online.
• Leader has gone ‘professional’.

Key ingredients and learnings:

• Satisfy real needs.
• Safe space.
• Mutual support and power.
• Who belongs.
• Stay amateur or go professional?

Who would think that government would be so interesting? Well, actually, not that many. Even most in government are tepid about it. But there is a small percentage that is passionate about what it can do, and who are driven to make it better.

That’s who Govloop is for.

Communities have to satisfy real needs

This might seem obvious. But you’d be amazed how many online and offline communities are started without a proper examination of whether they’re needed. And so they fail, or if they’re smart, they modify themselves to find and then satisfy something that people want, whether it’s a social life or social change.

In this case Steve Ressler (Govloop’s founder) was very clear about the need. And as is so often the case, he identified it by examining his own.

There’s a new breed of youngish people in government who want to innovate. Judging by Steve’s personal experience, it’s about 4%: “There were about three people out of the eighty in my department who were passionate. The other 77 couldn’t care less”. He felt lonely and dragged down by the ‘jobsworths’ (as we call them in the UK: “it’s more than my job’s worth to make change/rattle the cage etc”…a particular characteristic of government workers there too.)

Govloop is designed to help the innovators find each other, emotionally reinforce each other and get direct help to do a difficult thing in the slow-motion world of government: make change.

There may only be the equivalent of three out of eighty in government at large, but over 21,000 change-makers have found each other using the Govloop community after only 18 months of its existence. Clearly, it’s satisfying a real need.

Communities create safe spaces (Glue ingredient #2).

High-functioning communities create ‘safe spaces’ for individuals to become themselves, protected from criticism and attack because they are amongst ‘like-others’.

Whether politically, religiously, morally, or just on the basis of interest or passion, when individuals identify with each other because they buy into the same values and goals, they tend to be able to express that part of their personality with confidence because they are celebrated for what makes them feel the same inside the community of like-others, but different (and therefore isolated) outside. In this case, the like-others are innovators in government.

The emotional benefit of Govloop’s safe space is, as Steve puts it: “a place for passionate people to connect and get energy”. They feel confident enough to express their ideas and enthusiasms that would otherwise be censured or discouraged within their own departments.

In practical terms, Govloop’s safe space delivers the tools that are needed to effect real change. The forums, groups and blogs are all heavily used to share advice and post requests for help. And to break down silos within government so there’s a real sharing of best practice. Today, for example, there’s someone who wants to know how to handle a potential lawsuit generated by the users of their Facebook page. Another is about how to handle transparency in government.

The most popular part of the site is the ‘Groups’ function. Nearly 600 groups have self-organized around members’ needs…needs that Steve never imagined existed. Whether its about introducing new technology, learning leadership skills, or bringing creativity to government, these mini communities offer mutual support not just in terms of encouragement, but sharing best practice and one-on-one advice

Communities give mutual support and power.

Leverage through numbers is a familiar benefit of social and political movements. Mobilizing millions behind an agenda can change national policy and governments.

But group power can also effect change on a more modest scale. Govloop’s members have used the support of the community, in terms of numbers, to successfully argue the case to implement an idea to the employee’s boss or department.

Communities can get big and require resource.

Govloop has gotten very big, very quickly. It’s taken Steve by surprise. He satisfied a real need with a highly active community that is making change.

But running it part time has become untenable. Like any successful community it needs love and attention to recruit the right people, moderate the blogs and forums, and to continue to satisfy its members’ needs.

His ambition is to massively increase the size of the community to generate the network effect: more members will make the community more useful by having more people give more support and power. For example, the community currently answers roughly twenty questions a day (just part of its role). He wants to see a hundred in the next year.

But that requires some big decisions.

How should he do this? How is he going to support himself? How will he get the resource to really make this into a highly active online/offline community that really stirs up government?

An answer is to go full time. And his solution it to ‘privatize’. GovDelivery, a commercial organization, has just acquired Govloop. The decision has not been an easy, and in some quarters, popular one.

Steve’s dilemma is not an isolated one. And his story of how he solved it, figures he will stay on mission, and garnered buy-in from the community will be the subject of a coming post, probably called ‘Professionalize or not?’

Here’s Steve’s welcome video that describes the community’s purpose.

Here’s a WSJ article that covers how Govloop exploits social media, and uses it to break down silos within government.