Every community has a purpose, a reason for coming together – that defines why and how the community needs to connect. For a school, that purpose could be sharing up-to-date schedules. For a volunteer community, it could be having an easy way to organize projects. For football fans, their purpose could be supporting their favorite team throughout the season. It is a good practice to identify and communicate what you aim to achieve together and the benefit to your members. A clear purpose helps members understand how they can contribute to your community.

Start by asking yourself a few simple questions:

• Why do you want to build a community?
• What role does your community serve?
• What is the impact you want your community to make?

With your purpose defined, go ahead and create your community on WhatsApp. As a first step, you’ll need a:

• Photo, that visually captures your community;
• Name, which is memorable and reflects your purpose;
• Description, that clearly explains your community’s purpose.

How to create a community: Android | iPhone| Web

In building a strong and positive culture, it is important to ensure that members have joined the community for the right reasons. Consider:

• Who is your target audience?
• Are these people already connected through WhatsApp groups?
• Are there times when these groups would benefit from receiving the same information?

Here’s an example: a school community has parents, teachers, and students from many classes. Some announcements are important for all of those people – back-to-school announcements, school closings, assemblies. Other conversations only concern some of those people – teacher training, fourth grade field trip, soccer match.

Think about your audience and how they may break down into smaller and more focused groups. This is helpful in deciding whether you should bring existing groups together, or create entirely new groups in your community.

As new members join, new topics and connections will develop between people. As a community admin, you have the ability to add and remove members and groups to ensure the community remains relevant and positive while it grows.

Community admins play an important role in managing and encouraging interaction among members, and keeping their communities inclusive and safe. To support you in your tasks, Communities on WhatsApp provides you with tools you can use to manage your groups and members, and ensure an enjoyable experience for your community.

As a community admin, you are responsible for building and maintaining the community. You will do this by managing conversations while keeping your community safe. Within a community, each group has their own group admins, who are responsible for overseeing their group. In a well managed community, community and group admins communicate regularly with members and with each other, and remind everyone to respect the community rules.

In Communities on WhatsApp, you can save time by sending community level announcements to members through the Announcement group. Bringing groups under one community umbrella removes the need to make multiple announcements at the group level. Create and communicate your community rules early to set expectations of a good culture from the start. Great rules tell members how they can interact positively with others and contribute to the community. Rules can help prevent conflict and provide a feeling of safety for members.

Consider the following rules when writing your community guidelines:

• Be Kind and Inclusive. Please treat everyone with respect.
• No Hate Speech or Bullying. Degrading comments and personal attacks aren’t acceptable.
• No Promotions or Spam - Self-promotion and irrelevant messages aren't allowed.
• Respect Everyone's Privacy - We value mutual trust. What's shared in the groups should stay in the groups.

It is good practice to include the rules in the community description and post them in the Announcement group. Remind members that not following these rules can result in them being removed from the community. It is also important to work with your group admins to ensure the community rules are followed in group conversations.

As your community grows, so will your responsibilities. In large communities with multiple groups, you may need a team of admins to share the workload. This helps ensure tasks remain manageable for everyone involved, and aren’t dependent on just one person.

You have the ability to assign up to 20 community admin roles to other group admins or community members. When considering who to promote to your admin team, think about the following:

• Number of members, groups, and group admins;
• Number of community admins needed;
• Group admins who manage several groups;
• Group admins and members who actively participate in conversations and display good judgement;
• Members that are able to fulfil the admin role e.g., tasks such as writing-up communications, connecting with group admins, monitoring membership and connected groups, etc.

Set up an Admin-only group for both community and group admins to communicate and provide support for each other.

To manage your admin team members’ workload and wellbeing, it is helpful to think about and discuss your involvement from the start:

• How much time can each admin commit?
• What are the tasks and responsibilities that can be assigned to each admin?