CIWM leaders and members quickly recognised multiple substantial threats presented by the coronavirus outbreak. By mid-March, it was clear that the impact on organisational events, training courses, and meetings, as well as the subsequent revenue, would be significant, but also that a dedicated channel for rapidly responding to the crisis was vital to organisational relevance during the pandemic. While resources and waste management are broadly vital to the economy, it is critical to pandemic response as signified by essential workers' status being assigned to sector professionals. Industry best practices and news evolved by the hour. With hundreds of members on the front lines, communication and information sharing among members to distribute these learnings was essential.

Members recognised this and reacted, requesting more robust member sharing opportunities from the organisation. A handful didn’t wait, starting up a Slack instance for a vital knowledge segment. Over 100 members and non-members signed up for the Slack channel within weeks. This clearly indicated that getting online sharing right was both a response to a threat and an opportunity for CIWM.

Well before the pandemic, key CIWM leaders and staff recognised the opportunities presented by online community. Gemma Smith, Head of Marketing & Communications, led review of community opportunities. “CIWM had been in touch with Cantarus for years”, Gemma confirmed. “In fact, the very last out-of-office meeting I attended was a MemberWise seminar by Cantarus on online community. The virus pushed online community adoption from a longer-term consideration to a high priority for us. Speed was essential – our member need was urgent, and members were adopting piecemeal solutions without us, so we knew we had to act fast.”

With key CIWM staff, including CEO Sarah Poulter, taking a personal interest, the project progressed rapidly. Within two weeks the community platform was live, branded, and the initial integration performed. Key pre-release strategic objectives on content seeding were achieved and stakeholder recruitment had begun. Working closely as a single team allowed iteration on community and launch strategy on a number of points:

• More categories for community conversations including a “strictly social” channel for non-professional exchange and sharing
• A fully branded video tour of the platform offered to all members
• A home page welcome banner featuring a personal greeting from the CEO
• Launch day inclusion of an all-members webinar by CIWM staff and Cantarus
• The launch timetable would be expedited

With evidence of the platform both looking good and working well, CIWM leadership noted that member engagement in other channels was on the rise. Respecting CIWM’s grasp of their member appetite and acknowledging the staff commitment to community management and support of adoption, it was agreed to speed up the timetable. Under guidance from Cantarus, multiple days were cut from the project launch timetable by limiting influencer support activities, pausing the integration sync, and delaying changes from UAT and other feedback to post-release without impact on quality.