TechSoup recently held an online community meetup regarding building Super Fans. The event defined super fans as people online who demonstrate a particular brand of loyalty that, once recognized, stands to benefit your organization tremendously. Super fans are those individuals who are engaged with your organization above and beyond your average supporter.

In other words, super fans are super online volunteers – super-devoted, super-passionate online volunteers. And they usually emerge on your online community, in the comments section of your blog, in the comments section of your Facebook page, on Twitter (retweeting your stuff), etc.

As I said in the comments section of this blog recap: in this era when so many are claiming that most people only want micro-volunteering, just-whenever-you-might-have-time volunteering activities, it’s nice to read an article that acknowledges there are many people who want to be online volunteers with longer term commitments and much higher responsibilities, that want to be influencers, not just unpaid task-completers, and there are organizations that really do want such volunteers.

And as I also noted in my comments: I’ve found many nonprofits greatly fear “super fans” – they fear the intensity of their passion, their motivation, their loyalty and their energy. They fear the super fans unasked-for-suggestions and ideas, their independent tweeting and blogging, their spontaneous helpfulness to “regular” online community members… In fact, many nonprofits will shut down a super fan that they feel is too “super” – not for any policy violation or inappropriate behavior, but because of the perceived pressure such a fan can put on employees and other volunteers (when they “outshine” staff in an online community).

For the record: I fear not the super fan. I might make a suggestion to an online volunteer that’s a super fan, to make it clear they when they are speaking as an individual versus a rep of the organization, to change the wording on a blog or comment to make it more accurate, to let me announce something to an online forum first, etc. I might ask that super fan to join a formal committee to explore, in a more traditional manner, this or that program activity, outreach activity, etc. But I do not want to dampen that super fan enthusiasm! I have no idea how long it will last – will the person burn themselves out in a three months? Less? Super fans are never forever.

In fact, I’ve turned a couple of online super critics into super fans… but that’s another story.

I’ve also been a super fan myself, and most of the time it’s been super appreciated – but twice over the years, indeed, I was asked to curb my enthusiasm (“please don’t post to our online forum so much”) – both times by very traditional organizations that have been around a very long time.

So, why do some nonprofits sometimes fear super fans? Is it the unofficial or non-traditional nature of super fans that causes the fear? Is it that they fear anything they can’t completely control? How do you convince a nonprofit not to fear you, the super fan?

You can leave your comments here, or you can go over to the TechSoup forum thread I’ve started on this subject and post there.

Also see:

What is “too much” from an online contributor?

The dynamics of online culture & community

How to handle online criticism

Tags: volunteer, volunteers, online, virtual, volunteering, community, discussion, enthusiasm, enthusiastic, supporters, members, fans, critics, critic