Civitas Community Tools
Civitas, an optional add-on to ARCOS, offers additional tools to build your supporter base through social networking—letting them express their support and organize themselves into online and offline communities to carry your cause.
They can create personal blogs, interactive profiles, and online media. They can connect with friends and make new ones. You can give local leaders the tools to organize events. You can award points for actions and offer rewards for your most active members.
One of our clients built a network of local chapters dedicated to community service. You could use Civitas to build the next Facebook for your Spanish-speaking constituents. A small team of charity marathoners could organize training runs, fundraising events, and video diaries all in one place.
How will your organization use its national network of local activists? When you put the power of online social networking in the hands of your activists, the possibilities are endless.
Blogging & Social Networking
Blogging turns traditional one-way online communications into a true dialogue with your community of supporters. Civitas includes all the blog features you've come to expect: posting, commenting, tagging, RSS feeds, easy podcasts, photo blogs, and video blogs.
You can also invite your readers to create their own diaries under the umbrella of your site, cementing their ties to your organization and allowing user-generated content to add vitality to your site. A voting system lets the community "bubble up" quality content. Advanced moderation features make it easy to identify and reward top contributors and to warn and ban trolls and spammers.
Plus, built-in integration with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other leading social media networks gives you immediate access to new prospects in these existing communities.
Supporter Profile Pages
If you want to build a vibrant community online, your members will need to have a place to call home on your website. Civitas enables each of your members to create a custom profile page—their own personal space within your site where they can share information about themselves, publish their own blog, share online media and manage self-organized events. They can link to friends and family, send messages to other community members, and keep up with what's going on on a running "wall of comments". In short, Civitas offers everything they'll need to feel right at home.
Friends & One-to-One Messaging
Just like on Facebook, your in-house social network will benefit from supporters friending each other and inviting others to join. Any member can send a personal message to any other person in the network without having to know that person's email address or reveal his own. A full inbox functionality lets your social network serve as a hub for organizing and community-building around your mission.
Event Management
Combining the best features of Meetup and Evite, Civitas makes it easy for your members and your chapters to organize events themselves.
Send invites, manage RSVPs—even charge for tickets. When you consider that almost all organizing—house parties, fundraisers, and even door-knocking—boils down to event management, the true scope and power of Civitas becomes apparent.
Local Chapters & Interest-Based Groups
Civitas lets your supporters join communities based on geography or interests. These groups create a dynamic online community that strengthens supporters' connections to your organization and encourages them to become activists and leaders.
Local chapters instantly become a vibrant nationwide pool of volunteers and organizers, bridging the crucial gap between online activism and real-world results. Each chapter gets the online tools necessary for local communications and event organizing, so you can easily organize meetups, action days, and fundraisers. Chapter home pages automatically compile blogs, photos, and events published by chapter members, creating an inviting online community that supports and augments offline activism. Cultivate a dedicated corps of local chapter leaders, and watch your community start organizing itself around your cause.
Points Systems & Leaderboards
Although Civitas makes it easy for your online community to manage itself, it's no secret that successful organizing requires careful and consistent attention from your staff. Plus Three's unique points system gives your organizers a new way to incentivize activism and reward results.
The premise is simple. Your users earn "points" for completing online and offline goals that you prescribe: sign a petition, recruit five friends, organize a house party, etc. Chapters earn points based on the collective action of their members, fostering a team atmosphere. Your organization can use the points system to reward contest winners or to manage sophisticated premium programs.
The Civitas points system is easy to understand and proven to be successful. After all, who doesn't want to rack up high scores supporting their favorite cause?
