Our objective at Net2Van is to provide opportunities for the nonprofit community in Vancouver to have access to education, networking and the tools to help your organization thrive in the quickly changing world of technology. We understand that the lifeblood of any organization wouldn’t be possible without the support of donors – individuals and businesses. Building an engaging community strategy is key to forging new opportunities, raising awareness, recruiting volunteers and retaining those vital, hard-won relationships.

The UBC Continuing Education Studies department is offering a course on community management The Evolution of the Community Manager from January 25 – February 22, 2016. Net2Van committee member, Michelle Sklar, caught up with the program facilitator, Crystal Henrickson, to learn more about the course (that you don’t need to be a UBC student to attend).

Check out their interview below:

Tell us about the Community Management course you are teaching at UBC?
This is the foundational course in the Community Management Award of Achievement program offered at UBC’s downtown campus. In this 4 week course, that starts on January 25th, you’ll learn what the community manager landscape looks like — what skills and experiences are required, the types of roles and responsibilities of a community manager, how community managers differ and are complementary to other roles in the marketing/communications departments. We’ll also dig into the stages of communities that help community managers decide on where to focus their efforts.

What’s great is you don’t need to be a registered UBC student, or a university graduate to attend, as The Community Management program is part of Continuing Studies.

What topics will you be focusing on?
The focus of this course starts with properly defining a community manager’s role within an organization, and assigning roles and responsibilities to this role. We then move on to understand the DNA of different types of communities and how they act at various levels of maturity.

Can you tell us a little about the program format?
What’s great about the Community Management program at UBC is that the class sizes are small, meaning there is a lot of peer to instructor time and deeper discussions amongst peers. Our case studies and industry experts are curated from a number of industries: technology companies, non profits, online social networks and lifestyle brands. We take a lot of care to simulate real world community scenarios and use modern communication tools like Slack to give students a very practical approach to Community Management.

Who is the ideal participant for this course?
Industry professionals who are working in communications and marketing roles and want to increase engagement levels amongst their audiences, career transitioners who want to deepen their skills in community management, hiring managers and executives who want to understand emerging community roles.

Can you share with us some of the fun things you have in store for your students?
You’ll get to experience hosting your own AMA’s with community builders, “hangouts” online and offline with local industry experts, and unlimited access via Slack to program instructors (myself and Destin Jones: Change Heroes, formerly of Hootsuite, Latergramme).

Register for this course here.

Follow Crystal on Twitter: @marketing_girl

Follow Michelle on Twitter: @michelle_sklar