Engagement Pyramid: Visualise the different ways a person might get involved with your Campaign

Use this Engagement Pyramid to visualise the different ways a person might get involved with your campaign.

Contents

Introduction

Use this tool to visualise the different ways a person might get involved with your campaign, from the lower commitment activity of observing and endorsing to taking up active leadership.

The Engagement Pyramid is a tool that enables us to map how people can engage at different levels of “depth” in our campaign — and recognise that more people are likely to engage when the level of commitment required is lower.

You can also use the pyramid to work through how you might “level up” people and to ensure that you’re adequately catering to people who are willing to commit in different ways. Try not to get too caught up in the specific categorisations; you can use those as helpful prompts, but what a low-, medium-, or high-level of commitment for one organisation or campaign is could be very different for another. It has been adapted from Gideon Rosenblatt’s Engagement Pyramid: Six Levels of Connecting People and Social Change.

Levels of Engagement

Levels

Observing
Following
Endorsing
Contributing
Owning
Leading

Actions

Observing Interested in cause; aware of org/campaign: Learning more via friend, DD, media, social media Visits website / soc media; attends an event
Following Agrees to receive info; Provides contact info or subscribes Reading and watching your communications
Endorsing Single-step or straightforward actions with low risk / investment Signs petition, makes one-time / small donation, shares content
Contributing Multi-Step Assignments / Actions representing significant contribution of time, money, or social capital Joins group, attends event, makes large donation
Owning Ongoing, Collaborative Actions: Major investments of time, money, and social capital often blur; your org/campaign = source of passion Publishing about your campaign, public speaking, deep volunteer involvement
Leading Leads Others: Engaged becomes the engager; Focuses on training others; Easily confused with staff Organising others, recruiting donors, serving on board

Sample Metrics

Observing Website traffic Social mentions Media impressions Polling (awareness)
Following Email subscribers (active within last year) FB/Twitter followers People indicating they want to volunteer with you
Endorsing One time donors Petition signers People sharing Participating in volunteer welcome program
Contributing Regular donors Regular vols/activists Content creators
Owning Fundraising leaders Lead volunteers NVDA action-takers
Leading Group/community leaders Recruited by leaders

Download Resources

Detailed Engagement Pyramid A4

YOUR Engagement Pyramid Worksheet A4

Watch Video

The Engagement Pyramid by Global Platforms

Gideon Rosenblatt’s Engagement Pyramid is a model that can help with thinking strategically about entry points and varying levels of commitment of movement members.

Note

See the original version of this tool by Gideon Rosenblatt. The Mobilisation Lab made some modifications to the Engagement Pyramid as part of The Campaign Accelerator Toolkit. This is a practical guide by Mobilisation Lab for planning campaign projects. It includes visual templates, methods and exercises.