Community Management Glossary: 60 Terms Every Community Professional Should Know

This glossary defines the terms used throughout the Common Bonds learning center and in the wider community management profession. Terms are alphabetical. Where a term has a known origin, the source is noted.

90-9-1 rule

The observation that in most online communities roughly 90% of members only read, 9% contribute occasionally, and 1% produce most of the content. Described by usability researcher Jakob Nielsen in 2006 as “participation inequality.” Private professional communities often see a less extreme distribution. See Community Engagement Best Practices.

Activation

The point at which a new member first participates: a first post, reply, reaction, or event attendance. Activation rate is the share of new members who reach that point within a set window, commonly 14 or 30 days. The most important onboarding metric.

Active member

A member who has taken a defined action (such as logging in, viewing content, posting, or attending) within a period. Each community must define “active” explicitly. See Monthly active members.

Ambassador

A highly engaged member who represents and promotes the community, welcomes newcomers, and often has a formal role or title. Ambassador programs recognize and organize these members. In the Orbit model, ambassadors occupy the innermost orbit.

AMS (association management system)

The membership database and operations software an association uses to manage members, dues, events, and communications. A community platform should integrate with the AMS so membership status governs community access.

Audience

A set of people who pay attention to a single source, such as newsletter subscribers or social followers, with little interaction among themselves. Distinct from a community, where members interact with each other. See Community vs. Audience vs. Network.

B2B community

A professional community whose members participate on behalf of their companies rather than as individual consumers. Examples include industry associations, customer communities for business software, and executive peer networks. B2B communities are usually private because members share commercially sensitive information.

Belonging

The feeling that one is accepted and valued as a member of a group. Community design aims to create belonging through membership boundaries, recognition, shared experience, and mutual support. A core element of McMillan and Chavis’s sense of community.

Chapter

A geographic subdivision of a larger community or association, with its own members, leaders, and events. Chapters let a large organization offer local, in-person connection.

Chatham House Rule

A rule, originating at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London, stating that participants may use information from a discussion but may not reveal who said it or their affiliation. Widely adopted by professional and founder communities to protect candor.

Churn

The rate at which members leave, cancel, or go inactive over a period. The inverse of retention. In paid and association communities, churn at renewal is the most closely watched number.

Cohort

A group of members who go through a program or experience together over a fixed period, such as a new-member cohort, a course cohort, or a leadership program. Cohorts create strong bonds because members share a timeline and a goal.

Code of conduct

A formal document describing expected behavior, prohibited behavior, reporting procedures, and consequences. Usually longer and more formal than community guidelines, and often required by organizations for legal or governance reasons.

Community

A group of people with a shared identity or purpose who interact with each other repeatedly over time in a shared space. The defining feature is member-to-member value. See What Is a Professional Community?

Community Canvas

A one-page design framework created by Fabian Pfortmüller, Nico Luchsinger, and Sascha Mombartz that organizes community design into three areas, identity, experience, and structure, across seventeen themes. See Community Strategy Frameworks.

Community guidelines

A short, plain-language statement of the norms members are expected to follow. Best written positively (what to do) and kept to a page or less. See Community Moderation and Guidelines.

Community-led growth

A go-to-market strategy in which the community drives acquisition, retention, and expansion through member referrals, peer support, and advocacy. Associated with software companies but applicable to associations and creator businesses.

Community manager

The person responsible for the health, growth, and value of a community, including strategy, onboarding, engagement, moderation, member relationships, and measurement. See What Does a Community Manager Do?

Community of practice

A group of people who share a craft or profession and improve at it through regular interaction. Coined by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in Situated Learning (1991). Wenger describes three elements: domain, community, and practice.

Contribution rate

The share of members who posted, replied, reacted, or otherwise contributed within a period, as distinct from members who only read. Separates contributors from lurkers.

Creator community

A community built around a creator, author, educator, or coach and their audience. The creator is the initial draw; member-to-member connection is what retains people.

Customer community

A community hosted by a company for its customers, where members help each other use the product, share practices, and give feedback. Valued for support deflection, retention, and product insight.

Dunbar’s number

The approximate number of stable relationships a person can maintain, proposed by anthropologist Robin Dunbar and commonly cited as about 150, with inner layers near 5, 15, and 50. In community design it argues for sub-groups once a community grows beyond a hundred or so members.

Engagement

Ongoing participation by members: reading, posting, replying, reacting, attending, and connecting. Usually measured as active members over a period, contribution rate, or return rate. See Community Metrics and KPIs.

Engagement rate

Typically, monthly active members divided by total members. Useful as a trend within one community; unreliable as a comparison between communities because definitions of “active” differ.

Facilitator

The person who runs a meeting or group discussion, keeps the format, enforces norms, and ensures every member can participate. Central to founder peer groups and roundtables. See How to Run a Founder Peer Group.

Founder peer group

A small, confidential community of business owners or executives at a similar stage who meet regularly to share challenges and experience. Also called a forum, mastermind, or peer advisory board.

Founding member

One of the first members recruited personally before a community opens more widely. Founding members shape norms and seed early activity, and often receive lasting recognition. See How to Launch a Community.

Gamification

Using game-like mechanics such as points, badges, levels, and leaderboards to encourage participation. Effective when tied to helpful behavior; counterproductive when it rewards volume over quality.

Hot seat

A meeting segment in which one member presents a real, current challenge in detail and the group responds with clarifying questions and shared experience. Also called a case presentation or deep dive. The core of most founder group formats.

Lurker

A member who reads but rarely or never posts. Lurkers are a normal and valuable part of every community (see 90-9-1 rule); many receive real value and renew. The design goal is to make a first contribution easy, not to eliminate lurking.

Member directory

A searchable list of community members with profile information such as role, company, expertise, and location. Core functionality for professional communities, where finding the right peer is a primary reason to join.

Member journey

The sequence of stages a member moves through, commonly: awareness, joining, onboarding, activation, engagement, leadership, and either retention or departure. Used to design the right experience for each stage.

Members-only

Content or spaces accessible only to members, often behind a login and sometimes behind a paid membership. Members-only access supports candor and gives membership tangible value.

Membership model

The rules for who can join and on what terms: open, application-based, invite-only, free, paid, or tiered. The membership model shapes vetting, trust, and revenue.

Mitosis

In Richard Millington’s community lifecycle model, the stage at which a mature community splits into sub-communities by topic, region, or role, each with its own leaders and identity.

Moderation

The practice of maintaining community guidelines by reviewing content, handling reports, resolving conflict, and applying consequences. Mostly preventive in healthy communities. See Community Moderation and Guidelines.

Moderator

A person, staff or volunteer, who enforces guidelines and keeps conversations healthy within a defined scope.

Monthly active members (MAM)

The count of distinct members who took a defined action within a 30-day period. Also written MAU (monthly active users). The headline engagement metric for most communities.

Multi-tenant platform

A platform architecture in which many separate communities run on shared infrastructure, each isolated from the others. The organization gets a dedicated, private community without hosting software; the vendor ships improvements to every community at once.

Network

A set of people connected to one another without a shared, ongoing space or conversation, such as professional contacts or a conference attendee list. Good for introductions; weak for sustained learning. See Community vs. Audience vs. Network.

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

A satisfaction measure based on the question “How likely are you to recommend this to a peer?” on a 0 to 10 scale, calculated as the percentage of promoters (9 to 10) minus the percentage of detractors (0 to 6). Widely used as a trended community health signal.

Onboarding

The process of moving a new member from joining to first contribution and first relationship. The highest-leverage stage of the member journey. See Community Onboarding Best Practices.

Orbit model

A community framework, developed by the team behind the Orbit tool, that places members in concentric orbits (observers, participants, contributors, ambassadors) based on love (connection) and reach (influence), as an alternative to funnel thinking.

Owned vs. rented community

An owned community lives on a platform and domain the organization controls, with its own member data and branding. A rented community lives in a space controlled by another company, such as a social-network group or chat workspace. See How to Choose a Community Platform.

Private community

A community that requires approval, credentials, or membership to join and whose content is visible only to members. The dominant model for professional and B2B communities because candor depends on knowing who is in the room.

Programming

The planned calendar of community activities: rituals, events, cohorts, challenges, and spotlights. Programming gives members predictable reasons to return.

Response rate

The share of member posts that receive at least one reply, ideally from another member rather than staff. One of the best indicators that a community, rather than a help desk, exists.

Retention

The share of members from a starting group who are still active or still paying after a period, commonly 30, 90, and 365 days. Cohort retention curves are the most honest picture of community health.

Ritual

A recurring community activity with a predictable format and schedule, such as a weekly wins thread, a monthly member call, or a quarterly showcase. Rituals lower the effort of participating because members know what to expect.

Sense of community

A psychological concept described by David McMillan and David Chavis in 1986 with four elements: membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. The foundation for most community design theory.

SIG (special-interest group)

A subgroup within a larger community or association organized around a specific topic, role, sector, or region. SIGs are communities of practice inside the larger body and are typically among the most engaged segments.

Single sign-on (SSO)

A login method that lets members access the community with the same credentials they use for the organization’s other systems, such as the association website or AMS. Removes a common friction point in onboarding.

Space

A distinct area inside a community platform with its own purpose and, often, its own membership and access rules: a channel, forum, group, or room. Best practice is to start with few spaces and add them only as conversations outgrow their home.

SPACES model

A framework from CMX, founded by David Spinks, listing six kinds of value a community can deliver to an organization: Support, Product, Acquisition, Contribution, Engagement, and Success. Used to choose a community’s primary objective.

Support deflection

The reduction in support tickets or service requests that results from members answering each other’s questions in a community. A primary value metric for customer communities.

Time-to-first-contribution

The elapsed time between a member joining and their first visible contribution. The single best early predictor of whether a member will become active.

Vetting

The process of reviewing and approving prospective members against the community’s criteria before granting access. Vetting is what makes a private community’s confidentiality credible.

Volunteer leader

A member who takes on a formal role, such as SIG chair, chapter president, moderator, or welcomer, without being staff. Volunteer leaders are how communities scale beyond the capacity of their staff.

White-label platform

A community platform that runs under the organization’s own brand and domain with the vendor’s identity hidden or minimal, so the community feels like an extension of the organization.