What is MVC - Minimal Viable Community?
A minimal viable community (MVC) is a framework for building an online community in a lean and iterative way, similar to the minimal viable product (MVP) approach used for developing products.
A minimum viable product, or MVP, is a product with just enough features to attract early-adopter customers and to validate a product idea.
A minimal viable community (MVC) is the same - a community, group or network that is built and has the core of a concept, a few members and some element of organisation to validate whether the community has ‘legs’ and can be sustained.
What are the core elements of a minimal viable community?
The core elements of a minimal viable community are:
Purpose - Having a clearly defined purpose and reason for being that aligns with your target audience. This gives the community focus and direction.
People - Identifying and reaching out to a small group of ideal potential members to start participating and setting norms in the community.
Platform/Place - Choosing an online platform or platforms like Slack, Discord, Guild, Substack etc. that enable the community to come together to engage. Some minimal viable communities also gather in physical places before committing to a digital platform. And some communities need to generate some method of value generation, cash or funding/sponsorship before they can invest in technology and people/resource.
Guidelines - Establishing basic community guidelines to maintain a respectful, productive culture.
Leadership - Appointing passionate community leaders, managers or moderators to maintain community standards, organise events, facilitate conversations and manage the community.
Engagement - Creating opportunities for member interactions through discussions, content, questions, polls etc.
Measurement - Tracking basic metrics like membership growth, active users, posts per day to gauge traction and engagement.
What is the goal of a minimal viable community?
The goal of an MVC is to test and validate the community concept quickly and cost-effectively before scaling.
You build just enough to demonstrate value and get feedback from real users. Then iterate based on learnings before investing more resources. This approach reduces the risks of building unsuccessful communities.
Why is the minimal viable community way a good route for some?
Experiments in building communities can give you practice in bringing people together and also give you some helpful data points.
Good ideas can also come from actually doing the work. Not everything always works as expected in community. And some things you don’t expect to work can create amazing results.
You can test some hypothesis and get live feedback from members with much less at stake than if you’ve committed to a large community launch and an all-in-one platform.
If you’re not used to building communities an MVC approach can give you idea of the time, effort and skills required to do community well at scale.
As MVC advocate Rosie Sherry said at Guild’s Community Summit in 2022: “Everything is a good idea until you have to do it”, but an MVC can give you a taste of the value of community and highlight what you need to do to sustain or scale it successfully.
What is a good, simple framework for a minimal viable community?
Start with a hypothesis
Seems obvious, but start with a hypothesis for your community. e.g. philanthropists have very few spaces or opportunities to privately discuss their giving. I believe that they would value a small peer-to-peer group and occasional meetup to support one another.
Predict the outcome
Give yourself a few tangible things you can measure to be able to predict what an early success looks like, e.g. 30 philanthropists to join the community and to value it. Half of those to attend at least one in person or virtual meetup event this year.
Experiment
Decide where you host your community and try out some tried and trusted techniques in community management - e.g. member onboarding, member newsletters, virtual meetups, polls, conversation starters etc. - see my Periodic Table of Community Strategy for some considerations around community platforms, community engagement, community roles etc
Measure the outcome
Consider what you need to measure to decide whether the MVC is successful. For example, >70% of our philanthropists members engaged in the community and we exceeded the community membership and event attendance targets.
Summarise your learnings
Collect feedback from members and write down your own experiences. Consider what you can use for your next phase in community development. What was easy to do and valuable? What was hard to do, but valuable? What was easy or hard to do and you wouldn’t repeat it?
Decide what to do next
Not all communities succeed. You may choose to close yours down and thank everyone for participating. Or you may choose to scale things up, create sub communities or try creating a completely different community. You may choose to invest in community technology, hire a community manager or gain sponsorship.
The MVC approach allows you to experiment and adapt quickly in community.
Let me know if you have had any success with this approach and would like to share your learnings with others.
Further reading
I’m creating a community glossary and will be explaining some key concepts in community strategy, community building and community management.
Here are some connected articles that you may find helpful:What is Community Everywhere / what are Community Ecosystems?
What is Community Led Growth - is it the same as Community Based Marketing (CBM)?
What is Community Market Fit?
What is Minimal Viable Community (MVC)?
What are the 5 Ps and 1 C of community?What are rituals in community building and why are they so important?
What is Broken Windows Theory and does it apply to Community Management?
What is Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD)?
The Definitive Community Glossary - A - Z
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Want help launching or growing a community? Whether its an MVC or a larger community project, I’m ready and waiting to hear from you. Book an introductory call.
Photo by Liam Nguyen on Unsplash
