While a percentage of your community may look favorably at or even maintain a membership with your organization, you can tell if you’re delivering value by who shows up over time and who invests beyond your membership model.

Engagement, and to what degree, is the real KPI your Chamber of Commerce or Economic Development Organization (EDO) must carefully monitor. Most organizations report  online/social media engagement, roster size, networking attendance, gala tickets bought, sponsorships secured, and other outputs to paint a picture for engagement. 

You wouldn’t be in the wrong to report these metrics; however, stopping there means it’s unlikely you’ll achieve the real community-leading relevance that comes from true investment in your mission. 

The Five Levels of Engagement: Who’s In and Who’s Out

Over decades of helping organizations increase engagement in the hearts and minds of their stakeholders, we’ve seen the full spectrum and how to describe each strata. While your community, environment, and socio-political context is completely unique, the way people engage remains constant. 

Here’s a breakdown of the five levels:

Level of Engagement

What it looks like

1. ‍Awareness: Members sign up to avoid being left out or as a symbolic gesture, not out of genuine interest.‍
2. Interest: Members contribute from perceived value or tradition but lack a personal connection.
3. ‍Benefit: Members see specific advantages—such as networking or PR—and begin engaging more for personal or business gains.
4. ‍Engagement: Active participation emerges, often driven by an interest in advocacy or specific programs.
5. ‍Commitment: Members make substantial investments of time and resources, seeing their interests as aligned with the community’s success and your organization as the main vehicle for impactful change.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Measuring Member Engagement

The old adage “What isn’t measured isn’t managed” is not a universal truth, but when influential investors in your community can’t draw a straight line from their funds to a powerful return on their investment, they won’t invest. Oftentimes they won’t even get a membership to your Chamber–a tremendous indicator that the problems your organization solves have nothing in common with their ambitions.

Hence, when it comes time to report to your board or embark on another round of fundraising, think beyond simple outputs and numbers of activities achieved. Instead, frame it from the perspective of these key engagement metrics, from low to high:

• Event Participation: Are members attending signature events, or just sending a check?
• Advocacy Involvement: Do they echo your organization’s positions and personally support policy initiatives that shape the local business landscape?
• Leadership & Volunteerism: Are members stepping into leadership roles and actively contributing to committees?
• Financial Investment: Have members increased their level of giving over time, signaling deeper trust in your mission?
• Strategic Partnerships: Are key private businesses and public institutions aligning with your initiatives to advance regional economic growth–and putting their financial resources behind them?

These are outcomes, supported by numerical outputs, that display active participation, investment, and belief in where your organization is going. If you track and report from this perspective, you gain an honest view of your engagement that, in turn, gives you a much firmer footing in board meetings and better asking rights when it comes time to raise money. 

Secret Sauce: Investment-Grade Funding Only Comes from Level Five

While we like to see it, your real challenge is not moving members from level one to level four. Any and every organization has some success acquiring members who achieve awareness, interest, benefit, and to some degree, engagement. Instead, they’re merely a prerequisite to a far more complex conundrum: 

How do you get the right people in your community to number five–where the most influential community leaders commit “investment-grade” time and resources with enthusiasm?  

In short, you must break with–or at least move beyond–traditional, member-augmentation fundraising models in a profound way. Your organization can’t get substantial investments of time and resources without an ambitious plan that transcends low-level membership benefits into high-level outcomes that high-level investors in the community want to see. 

We call this relevance. It’s the last step in our five levels of engagement, but it’s taller than the rest put together. 

Garnering Deep Commitment

Relevance is NCDS’ term to describe the tidal, transformative effect only made possible when Chambers and EDOs position themselves at the center of their community’s economic future. It’s where strategic planning and campaign fundraising meets; it ensures mission/vision alignment with major investors, elevates your organization into a de facto leadership position, reduces overlap/duplication of effort with other organizations, and puts your organization in the strike zone for investment-grade funding. 

We’ve never seen a community without enough powerful stakeholders such that Chambers and EDOs could not achieve far greater economic impact beyond traditional membership models. In fact, some of the most head-turning stories of relevance and impact come from small- and mid-sized communities. 

When the community wins, these stakeholders win; when they see an ambitious vision for the future that inspires them and is attainable, they have a hard time saying no. There are even foundation monies available when the relevant community leadership reveals itself and aligns with their values. 

NCDS feels so strongly about relevance that we offer a standalone product called the Roadmap to Relevance and Revenue that will position your organization for transformative funding, accessibly priced for any community. For a free consultation, get in touch with us any time. 

The Path to Sustainable Relevance

Your Chamber or EDO will not solve many problems with simply more members; it needs the right members engaging at the right level. That’s why we created The Five Levels of Engagement—a practical, strategic guide to help organizations like yours cultivate deeper commitment, unlock new sources of transformative funding, and drive lasting economic impact.

Download the complimentary guide here, or if you want to get started, contact us today for a free consultation. 

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