Whether you’re a first time scientific community manager or have been supporting communities for some time, resources on this page will help you to address some common challenges – from time management and making the most of networking to maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders.
Blog posts
AM I a Scientific community (Engagement) manager?
- The moment you realize you have become a community engagement manager – CEFP2017 Fellow, Elisha Wood-Charlson shares the four moments that led to her realizing that she’s a scientific community engagement manager.
- “How do I become a community whatsit?” CEFP2017 Fellow, Malin Sandström answers some common questions for new or wannabe scientific community managers.
- Imposter syndrome and community management – lessons on building community while building myself. CEFP Fellow, Shane Hanlon shares his experience of realizing he is a community manager – and one who’s benefiting from belonging to a professional community himself.
- What does a scientific community manager do? Check out the CSCCE Skills Wheel and accompanying guidebook! – Background on how the C3 project team from the 2017 CEFP cohort created the CSCCE Skills Wheel.
Time management
- How to use objectives and key results to say no and stay focused – CEFP2019 Fellow, Naomi Penfold shares a planning template for making sure tasks are aligned with an overall strategy.
- Scheduling my way to success – time management tips for community managers. CEFP2017 Fellow, Allen Pope tries an experiment to allocate time slots to his tasks.
- Results from our 2016 survey of scientific community managers showed that for 32% of respondents prioritizing the number of tasks that they have to do is their biggest challenge.
BUILDING AND MAINTAINING Relationships
- Ten networking strategies for community managers – CEFP2019 Fellow, Rayna Harris shares advice for social media, events and more.
- Building and maintaining strong internal/external staff relationships – a lesson in patience – CEFP2017 Fellow, Melanie Binder shares four tips for stakeholder engagement – including when there’s an annual turnover of committee roles.
RESILIENCE
- January’s community call recap: (Personal) Resilience and Community (Management) – This blog post contains a recap of our January 2021 Community Call, along with a collection of tips for building a personal resilience practice gathered from the participants in the call, and a host of resources from blog posts to books to podcasts. You can also watch the video archive of CEFP 2017 alum Jennifer Davison’s presentation on resilience below.
SURVIVING – AND THRIVING!
- In the Introduction to the Community Manager’s Survival Guide series, CEFP2017 Fellow Andy Leidolf reflects on the importance of building social capital.
- In part one of the Community Manager’s Survival Guide, Andy discusses how the creation of a welcome booklet and participant portal helped members of the iUTAH collaboration to engage.
- In part two of the Community Manager’s Survival guide, Andy describes addressing institutional diversity and power imbalances.
- In part three of the Community Manager’s Survival Guide, the importance of a shared vision and “project commons” is discussed.
- Strategies for survival in a newly-created community manager position – CEFP2017 Fellow and first-time community manager, Josh Knackert shares what he learned in the first year of his role.
FInding peer support
- Online coworking partnerships are community of practice in action – CEFP2017 Fellow, Stefanie Butland and CEFP2019 Fellow, Naomi Penfold share their formula for successful work sessions.
- Being part of a cohort and finding support in unexpected places – CEFP2017 Fellow, Heidi Olds shares how being part of the inaugural CEFP cohort of scientific community engagement managers impacted her.
And if you’d like to connect with other scientific community managers, join the CSCCE community of practice! Request an invite here.