When designing and running a challenge, it’s useful for people in your team to have the following skills (remember that some of this can be carried out by volunteers or nominated “experts” within your community/network).
Marketing & communication
Some team members will be better at public speaking than others – nominate these people to reach out to the media and speak at relevant events to introduce the challenge. We recommend having a “soft launch” with a small group of people to market big challenges, before opening up the platform. Keep things social by scheduling updates and blogs on your website and social-media accounts, and share a press release early so that partners and supporters can get the challenge into their scheduled newsletters and print media on time.
Of course, many participants will be drawn to the challenge through personal connections, so for small/team challenges, a simple announcement at a team meeting may be enough.
Consulting and business mentoring
Moderators will be the most active during the early stages of a challenge and will need to ask constructive questions and offer real feedback at this time to set a good example. You could look at Business Model Canvas for some direction on what questions to ask. You could also look at Stanford's Social Business Model Canvas.
Questions could include:
What problem does your idea address?
Who are your customers? (if relevant)
How will you reach out to your customers? (if relevant)
How will you ensure your idea is sustainable?
What value does your idea deliver?
How will you measure impact?
Do the key competencies that are needed to realise the project exist within your team members? If not, how will these been covered (recruitment, volunteering or partners)?
How big is the market for each customer segment/identified beneficiary?
Who are your competitors/what are your substitute products?
Online moderation
Be explicit about who’s going to do what online within your team, so that the platform is not left unmanned while it’s live. If roles are unclear and team members think someone else is doing something, it can compromise the user experience. Don't worry if the challenge is not heavily moderated over the weekend – the working week is more important.
If you’re new to online tools, you’ll want to make sure you've spent time familiarising yourself with your chosen platform. An experienced moderator will already have some good habits, such as logging onto the platform regularly, linking updates to social media and connecting with new members. See sections 4.1 and 4.2 for guidelines on facilitating your challenge.
Topic expertise
If there’s a topic expert within your team, they can be your first “champion”, responsible for sharing relevant content and links that relate to the challenge theme. Appointing someone in this way will increase trust within the community, because participants will be able to see that your intentions are sincere.
When it comes to scheduling, we’ve found it works well to let the community know that on day X, expert Y will look at all ideas that have been submitted and provide feedback. Include a brief description of expert Y in the newsletter, preferably with a picture, and then ask the expert to write a brief blog post on their favourite ideas. This works really well with some experts and not with others, so it pays to experiment with different people.
Design
This is not essential since you can always use a freelance graphic designer, but if you do have an in-house designer, they can help you to design communication materials, such as images, banners, email templates, and so on.
Event planning
We recommend, whenever possible, that you host offline events to complement the online challenge. These might range from an idea-development workshop at your local co-working space or World Cafe©– to connect idea-submitters before and during the challenge – to the final pitch event. Use these events as an opportunity to recruit more members to your challenge and don't forget to announce them in your newsletters.
