By Annaliese Hoehling, Publications Director, NTEN

The community manager has been around longer than you may think – and I'm not trying to be like Malcolm Gladwell by drawing (questionable) parallels to pre-Internet practices. Within the era of the World Wide Web, there has always been someone filling the role that we are only recently starting to staff for purposely: the Community Manager.

Today's Community Manager had her start in the chat rooms and discussion/support forums of yesteryear. She would have helped answer questions, point folks to appropriate rooms, discussions, or resources, and would also have probably kicked folks out of rooms or deleted posts when inappropriate behavior was identified or reported. The role would have been either voluntary, especially in the case of chat rooms, or proprietary, in the case of hosted forums. She would have had more in common with a bouncer or a customer service representative than a PR professional. (And "she" would probably have been a "he" – but I digress.)

Sometime during her (and the Web's) evolution, however, she began to look and act more like that PR Professional. Since around 2008, the Community Manager has become a position in high demand in the business and nonprofit sectors. Her job description now likely includes the words "PR", "communications", even "brand".

In the introduction to the 2011 State of Community Management Report, David Armano, SVP for Social Business Planning & Integration at Edelman, tells us that the "Community Manager" is popular now because there has been a "fundamental shift" in social behavior. More individuals are engaging in online communities, made more mainstream thanks to Facebook and Twitter, due to the new way we now find and filter information: online, often via online communities or community-generated information.

These popular, mainstream online communities, and the opportunities produced by this social shift, represent potential customers, constituents, supporters, and donors – the people and conversations you and your organization want to connect with.

Traditionally, the job of communicating with supporters about your cause has been the responsibility of your "Communications" staff. But things can get confusing for a nonprofit organization, especially when staffing resources are strapped and many staff already wear multiple hats.

Do you need a Communications Manager or a Community Manager for these new channels? What's the difference?

To tackle these questions, I interviewed experts in both nonprofit communications and online organizing. I also informally polled the NTEN community. Here is what I learned:

"I think these are definitely two different jobs, but we see plenty of instances where one person is asked to do them both", says Kivi Leroux Miller, President of Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com (and author of the book by the same name). "Sometimes that works; other times it doesn't."

In general, Kivi sees the Communications role as providing direction for the information either going to or coming from a nonprofit's constituency, while the Community role is to help facilitate a conversation within a community.

"Communications managers are advocates for content; community managers are advocates for conversation", she says. "If you blend the job into one person, you have to make sure that person understands these two parts of the whole, and how they intermingle and influence each other."

Interestingly, Kivi sees the social web as the common ground between the two roles, a place where both professionals need to perform well.

Debra Askanase, CEO and Engagement Strategist for Community Organizer 2.0, has a slightly different view of the two roles and organizational dynamics. While she does suggest that the Community Manager is taking on some of the responsibilities traditionally carried out by Communications staff, she also sees these roles as working together, and, in many ways, even dependent on each other:

"The community manager should, ideally, carry out the messaging and content strategy of the organization. In many organizations, this is traditionally developed by the communications team."

While she does see the potential for overlap, especially in a small-staff situation, she identifies some key differences in the necessary skill sets for each role. For example, Debra includes "Conflict management" as well as "Understanding of community-building" in her list of requirements for a Community Manager.

"Sometimes the communications manager also implements online community management", Debra adds, "in which case he/she must also have the community manager's skill set" (my emphasis).

When asked to look into the future and tell us what she foresees for these organizational roles, she replied:

"I honestly think we're at a critical crossroads where the communications industry has to evolve." Whether one role would actually replace the other, however, she's not ready to say.

When I asked the NTEN community via Twitter about the difference between the two roles, I heard responses like these:

And when I asked our Facebook Page community if they thought the "Community Manager" would eventually supplant the traditional "Communications" role, I heard:

And:

There is a significant difference between the two roles we currently define as "Communications" and "Community". Each role is crucial to nonprofit work – but the turf on which these roles must perform is increasingly becoming the same place: the social web.

It's easy for a small nonprofit with limited staff and resources to look at the single turf (the social web) and decide that they need one person to work "there".

According to both expert and community feedback, understanding that there are different relationships a nonprofit needs to build and manage with its various constituents is the key to solving the Communications/Community conundrum.

The effective nonprofit will design job descriptions that focus on the relationship goal rather than the medium in which the staff person will perform, and consider the different skill sets and personality strengths required for the different relationships an organization needs to maintain.

It may be that the "Community Manager" who evolved from a Bouncer to a PR professional will continue to evolve and eventually display skills and abilities that meet all the relationship goals of an organization.

Perhaps we'll then need to invent yet a new title for this person: Chief Relationship Officer.

Add your voice to this discussion: Do you foresee a time when the traditional "Communications" role will be supplanted by what we now call "Community Manager" for nonprofit organizations?

Annaliese has been with NTEN for over four years, working to connect NTEN members with each other and with the information and resources that will help make their jobs a little (or a lot!) easier as Membership and Outreach Manager. Starting in 2011, Annaliese is working to develop NTEN's research and publications documenting the transformational power of technology in the nonprofit sector.