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 / social 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)

2. Following

Email subscribers (active within last year)
FB/Twitter followers
People indicating they want to volunteer with you

3. Endorsing

One time donors
Petition signers
People sharing
Participating in volunteer welcome program

4. Contributing

Regular donors
Regular vols/activists
Content creators

5. Owning

Fundraising leaders
Lead volunteers
NVDA action-takers

6. 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.