Kwanda brings people of African and Caribbean heritage together to fund sustainable development across Africa.

It wanted to shift power to its members by enabling them to communicate with its team directly. And also create a way for members to shape the organisation’s activities in an open and transparent forum.

Kwanda listed the different kinds of communications they wanted to share with their members. These included:

• project updates

• Internal updates

• polls

• feedback requests

Kwanda needed to communicate with its project partners, who are based in the countries where projects are being carried out. So the organisation could get updates about:

1. what’s happening on the ground

2. the progress being made in projects

3. the impact that projects are having on people’s lives

Kwanda already knew that people were turning to their organisation because of a lack of trust in traditional, paternalistic, top-down funders.

Their members were looking for systems and processes based on respect for the autonomy, dignity and lived experience of everyone involved.

Members wanted transparency, accountability and real-time evidence of the impact their contributions were making. They would want to ask questions about how the organisation’s run, and how projects are progressing.

From their knowledge of their members, Kwanda assumed that they would also want to:

• suggest potential new projects and discussion topics

• have opportunities to network with like minded people

• share resources, events and ideas

Their members would also expect communication to take place on a platform that’s easy to use.

Kwanda decided to send a survey to its members asking about the tools they used to communicate with friends, family and colleagues. They made it clear that they were asking about this so they’d have a better idea of the platform that might work best for sharing updates, gathering feedback and answering questions. And for members who wanted to share their thoughts and learn from each other.

Kwanda shortlisted WhatsApp and Slack. Because their survey showed that most members were using WhatsApp to communicate with friends and family. And Slack was the platform that a lot of members used at work.

They set up a Slack workspace and trialled it for 2 weeks. But they found that:

• it felt very corporate and not really suited to informal conversations

• members who hadn’t used it before didn’t want to download another app on their phone or desktop

• there were members who weren't willing to learn how to use Slack’s features

So, although Slack met Kwanda’s communications needs, they couldn’t get many members to use it.

They tried a WhatsApp community next. It didn’t have some of Slack’s useful features. For example automations, integrations and the ability to push website updates to the platform. But it worked much better because so many people were already on it. And they knew how to use it.

Members join the WhatsApp community by invitation from Kwanda. Before they join, the organisation makes sure they understand that the WhatsApp community is unoffical and external. This means that it’s not covered by the organisation’s privacy policy.

They also let people know that, if they’re collecting people’s personal data, the data they’ve gathered is not an official Kwanda distribution list.

WhatsApp communities make everyone’s number private except the person who set up the community. So members’ mobile numbers were not visible to each other.

Kwanda wanted to take a light touch approach to moderation but also make their expectations about behaviour clear. So they updated the community description with guidelines that covered how members interact.

They went back to their list of what they wanted to communicate to members, and what members wanted to communicate with each other. From there, they developed a set of 5 or 6 guidelines suitable for an online community of 100-200 people:

This is our place to gather as villagers.

👋🏿 Introduce yourself

😊 Connect with like minds

🌍 Get project updates

🤔 Ask questions

💡 Share ideas for projects

🛖 Suggest ways to improve Kwanda

… It takes a village.

They wanted to see how people used the space before adding any more. By taking a fairly relaxed approach to the guidelines, they got better insights for making decisions. For example, because they didn’t stop members from promoting or advertising, they were able to see that this aspect of the community was really important to them. Over several months they also got a sense of other things members wanted. For example, some wanted to meet up offline.

They have found that, over time, the group has become largely self-moderating. That said, Kwanda’s founder is regularly active in the group. They see how members are responding to conversations, and only get involved if it’s necessary.

Kwanda found that the large numbers of group members meant they became advertising targets. They managed this by creating a promotion sub-group that members could choose to join.

Kwanda has posted ad hoc surveys to gather feedback. These give them a sense of what members want. For example, they’ve asked if members could only receive one kind of update, what would it be?

The other main way that Kwanda gets feedback from members about the community is by observing what’s happening in the group. For example, to see if there are conversations that should become subgroups.

They’ve found that there are 2 triggers for creating subgroups. The first is the team observing that they’re needed. For example if there’s a long, ongoing debate. And the second trigger is a request from members. For example, members were discussing forming a book club. So Kwanda created a Village Book Club subgroup.

As well as setting the context for specific kinds of information and discussions, they found that subgroups organise conversations and make them easier to follow. Compartmentalising conversations helps to reduce noise.