Backed by Y CombinatorThree documents and three sheets that turn real engagement data into a ranked tier list, catching the rare low-post member whose referrals alone earn Champion status.
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What you get
Pack of 6 files: 3 documents, 3 spreadsheets
Community Building Strategy TemplateMember Register
Every community member's trailing 90-day activity, before a tier has been computed or a referral checked.
| Company | Contact | Activity Score | Referrals | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
A tier is computed from real posts, replies, and event attendance, then checked against closed referrals before it is finalized.
Amsell Analytics runs a 64-member customer community for operations and supply chain teams. Its own numbers echo a pattern Nielsen Norman Group has documented across online communities for two decades: roughly 90% lurk, 9% contribute occasionally, and 1% account for almost all the activity. Amsell's community skews further still: 4 members, 6.25% of the total, generated 87 of the community's 106 measured contribution points in the trailing 90 days, 82.1% of everything that happened. 51 members, 79.7% of the roster, posted, replied, or attended nothing at all.
Sorting by raw activity alone still misses the member worth the most. Tobias Kirkwood, Ravensdale Logistics' director of operations, posted once and replied once in the window, a score of 2 that alone ranks him below nine more active Contributors. He also referred two paying customers. Because a closed referral is a rarer, more commercially direct signal than another reply, it overrides the raw score outright instead of adding to it. That moves Kirkwood straight to Champion, regardless of how quiet his posting history looks next to it.
A community that only produces pleasant chatter is an audience wearing a community's name. Once the four Champions are named, they become the standing list for an ambassador program, a co-hosted AMA, or a case-study ask, the same well a webinar programme or a field and dinner event draws its warmest invitations from. The 51 Lurkers are not a problem the Programming Calendar tries to fix by pushing everyone to post. A low-friction poll keeps them reacting instead, and the reaction counts tell a moderator the quiet majority is still present rather than gone.
Member Register64 members scored on trailing 90-day activity; 7 of the 64 shown here.
| Company | Contact | Score | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fennwick Robotics | Priya Ondaatje | 52 | Champion |
| Oakmoor Systems | Marcus D.-Whitfield | 25 | Champion |
| Bellhaven Traders | Sana Okafor | 8 | Champion |
| Ravensdale Logistics | Tobias Kirkwood | 2 (+2 ref.) | Champion |
| Corriston Foods | Ines Marchetti | 4 | Contributor |
| Thistlebrook Retail | Declan Ashworth | 3 | Contributor |
| Amberfield Group | Petra Kirkwood | 0 | Lurker |
The other 50 Lurkers and 7 Contributors follow the same pattern. Only Tobias Kirkwood's Champion tier comes from the referral override rather than the raw score.
Activity MetricsThe raw counts behind the register above, same 7 members, trailing 90 days.
| Contact | Posts | Replies | Events | Referrals | Reactions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Priya Ondaatje | 18 | 31 | 3 | 1 | 24 |
| Marcus D.-Whitfield | 9 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 24 |
| Sana Okafor | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 18 |
| Tobias Kirkwood | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 12 |
| Ines Marchetti | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Declan Ashworth | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Petra Kirkwood | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
Lurkers gave 183 of the community's 291 reactions this window, 62.9%, while posting zero times between them.
Champion IdentificationAll 4 Champions from the register, with what they did and why it matters.
| Contact | Company | What They Did | Why a Champion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priya Ondaatje | Fennwick Robotics | 18 posts, 31 replies, 3/3 events | Category leader; others cite her threads by name |
| Marcus D.-Whitfield | Oakmoor Systems | 9 posts, 14 replies, 2/3 events | Only VP posting technical detail, not asking for a call |
| Sana Okafor | Bellhaven Traders | 4 posts, 3 replies, 1/3 events | First reply on pricing questions from newer members |
| Tobias Kirkwood | Ravensdale Logistics | 1 post, 1 reply, 2 referrals | Raw score alone reads Contributor; referrals make him Champion |
Three of four Champions lead on raw activity. The fourth qualifies through the referral override alone.
Defining who can join, the three engagement tiers, and the ground rules that keep vendor pitches and competitor bashing out of the space.
A recurring cadence, monthly AMA, biweekly prompt, quarterly spotlight, plus the low-friction poll that gives a Lurker something to click.
Built around real cases: a public complaint, a competitor's employee posting, an off-topic pitch, each with a response-time target and an escalation path.
Scores every member's trailing 90-day posts, replies, and event attendance into a Lurker, Contributor, or Champion tier, with the referral override recorded next to the raw score.
The raw per-member counts behind every tier, including reactions given, so a Lurker's real presence shows up even at zero posts.
Names what each Champion actually did, why it matters, and the one recommended action: ambassador invite, case-study ask, or moderator role.
Send your community platform's activity export for the trailing 90 days, posts, replies, and event attendance per member, plus any closed referrals your CRM has tied to a member's name.
River sums each member's raw contribution score, assigns the naive tier, then checks referrals separately and overrides any member with a closed referral straight to Champion.
Champion Identification turns the resulting short list into specific next actions, an ambassador invitation, a case-study ask, a co-hosted session, drafted in that member's own context.
A tier describes the last 90 days, not a member's whole tenure, so the Programming Calendar and Member Register both stay current as real activity shifts.
Yes, and the download is the whole thing, every document and sheet, with no signup and no card. Edit with AI installs it as a private workspace and replaces Amsell's worked example with your own community's activity. More packs sit in the template library.
Three Word documents and three CSV sheets in one zip. The documents open in Word, Pages, or Google Docs, and the sheets open as real spreadsheets in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets, so the tiers and activity counts stay usable data rather than a table flattened onto a page.
A community engagement plan sets goals like raising monthly active members and lists tactics for hitting them. It does not compute a tier from any individual member's real activity, and it has no mechanism for a member who barely posts but referred a paying customer. This scores every member from measured data and overrides the score itself when a referral outranks it.
Say so, and score whatever rough count already exists, even a moderator's informal tally, rather than waiting for a perfect export. Note plainly which counts are estimated so they can be replaced once a real export exists, the same way Amsell's own first quarter running this process would have started.
Sum posts, replies, and event attendance over the trailing 90 days; five or more makes a Champion, one to four a Contributor, zero a Lurker. Then check referrals separately: a member with at least one closed referral in the window becomes a Champion regardless of that raw score, since a referral is a rarer and more valuable signal than another reply.
They are deliberately separate. The event and conference pack and field and dinner event pack get the right people into a room once. This pack keeps them engaged in between, and a Champion identified here is often the first person worth inviting to co-host the next one.
Written by
Co-founder & CEO, River
Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.
Send your community platform's activity export and whatever referral data your CRM has. River scores every member's real engagement, overrides for referral impact, and names your Champions.
Edit with AI