Community champions are emergent leaders – members of a community who wish to take on additional activities in support of the community. To learn more generally about why champions are necessary for community success, check out the CSCCE Community Participation Guide, and its companion guide, which describe the CHAMPION mode in detail. 

Community champions programs

Community champions programs, in which participants may alternatively be referred to as ambassadors, fellows, or something else, are often the key to successfully empowering and supporting emergent leaders in a community. From 2021-2022, CSCCE convened a working group within our community of practice to explore champions programs, and as a result created a series of nine tip sheets to describe them through a series of stages. You can also find an overview of all nine stages in the champions guidebook linked above. 

In 2017, the Advocacy Ninjas CEFP project team comprised of Stephanie O’Donnell, Heidi Olds, Allen Pope, Gabrielle Rabinowitz and Rosanna Volchok created a survey to better understand what champion programs (at the time, they referred to them as advocacy programs) look like within scientific communities.

They collected data from 37 scientific community managers who work at academic, non-profit, industry, and government sector organizations. They found, among other things: Older programs had the biggest budgets while newer programs offered more incentives for involvement; Program size, community size, and resources may be correlated; And some program characteristics hold similar across various budget sizes, while low budget programs tend to represent smaller communities with fewer internal resources.

For an overview of the project, watch this presentation from co-authors Rosanna Volchok and Allen Pope:

Download the full report:

What motivates community champions or super-users?

The Busy Bees project team of the CEFP2019 cohort comprised of Toby Hodges, Naomi Penfold and Kathryne Woodle with support from Lou Woodley, created a survey to better understand the motivations of community super-users or ambassadors (which we now refer to as champions). You can learn more about the project from this presentation during the March 2020 community call.

Blog posts

• New publication highlights NMDC Ambassador Program – This blog post, which highlights the success of the NMDC Ambassadors program, describes the outsized impact community champions programs can have in culture change initiatives that rely on a change in community norms.
• 5 guiding questions to help you support community volunteers – CSCCE’s Lou Woodley shares her insights on when and how to support volunteer labor in your community. 
• October’s community call recap – Supporting community champions and running champions programs – Our October 2021 community call coincided with the release of our champions guidebook, and included presentations from presentations from Vanessa Fairhurst (Crossref Ambassadors program), Iratxe Puebla (ASAPbio Fellows program), and Ailís O’Carroll (eLife Community Ambassadors program).
• New CSCCE resource explores the role of champions in building and sustaining communities in STEM – an overview of how and why we created a guidebook to supporting community champions. 
• Ambassadors, Fellows, Champions, and More: What defines success in scientific community champions programs? – this guest blog post, authored by the Advocacy Ninjas, accompanies the release of their report and lays out their key findings.
• March’s Community Call Recap – What makes a great ambassador program? – a recap of our March 2020 community call, which focused on ambassador (aka champion) programs.
• Changing our Plantae Fellows Program from Exclusive to Inclusive – CEFP2017 fellow Melanie Binder talks about the evolution of a champions program.
• Champions, Ambassadors, Fellows, and More: Introducing the Advocacy Ninjas – CEFP2017 fellow Allen Pope introduces the Advocacy Ninjas and lays out the many names of champion programs.
• Understanding the Advocacy and Ambassador Program Landscape – CEFP2017 fellows Melanie Binder and Rosanna Volchok report out on the early stages of the Advocacy Ninja’s project.

Community champions working group / special interest group

Throughout 2021 and into 2022, CSCCE convened a working group within our community of practice to share knowledge and offer support. We hosted monthly meetings, sometimes including presentations from members, and several members of the working group co-created tip sheets with CSCCE staff (included above). The group has transitioned to become a special interest group, with any member of the CSCCE community of practice welcome to join the Slack channel. 

Additional CSCCE resources

Resources for reuse

CSCCE staff have produced various guidelines and how to guides to support community champions within the CSCCE community of practice. The following resources are licensed CC BY and are available for reuse with attribution. 

• Guidelines for working groups and special interest groups
• Guide to setting up your special interest group
• Guidelines for contributing to the CSCCE blog

Consultancy

We offer consultancy for individuals and groups interested in, or already engaged in, running a community champions program (e.g., our work with NMDC, The Carpentries, and rOpenSci). We are also available to offer training in community management to champions cohorts (e.g., our work with eLife). If you are interested in finding out more, please visit our consultancy page, or reach out directly to training@cscce.org.