March 2025 Edition

Uhhhmmmm where has the first quarter of this year gone?! Apologies for the delay. It’s been quite the month with a lot of travel for Jessie J. I am going to keep this month’s newsletter as simple as possible. 

Here’s everything you need to know in community land: 

💰Submit Your Q1 Expenses ASAP
Friendly reminder to submit any of your Q1 expenses this week by filling out the reimbursement this form. **Also please note it can take a month to get fully reimbursed into your bank account. 

🏆 Please VOTE! We’ve Been Nominated (again) for the CMX Awards
Our community has once again been nominated for Best Growth Marketing community of the year (against big brands like Slack and eBay). Also yours truly has been nominated for Best B2B Community Professional. 

I would greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to vote here by April 7th!!
🗳️

🤝 Are You in for 2025? Plus Upcoming Chapter Lead Onboarding
Take a moment to let us know if you’re still up for leading your chapter. It can also be hard to admit when you don’t have the time/bandwidth to lead a chapter. Whether you’re committed to this year or need to step away, fill out this form (if you haven't already). 

*Reminder one of our minimum asks is to ‘leave the chapter better than you found it.’ That said, if you have a chapter lead that needs to be onboarded to support with your chapter, send me a DM. We’re looking for a date in late April. 

🫶 Where’s Culture Amp on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion?
Recently we hosted a webinar to address the current HR landscape when it comes to DEI. You can watch the recording here. The TLDR; we're still passionate about creating inclusive and equitable workplaces. 

We also recently surveyed our community members to get a better sense of how we can best support folks with various resources. Stay tuned for what's next. 

🤺What About All These ’Competing’ Communities?
Everyone and their mother is starting a community especially in the HR space. Here’s my take. 

Let them! Disconnection is a disease and community is the cure. In this loneliness epidemic, we can’t get enough connection IMHO. The how or the what of these communities may look a little different but we share a similar why. At the end of the day, we need each other! Don’t fall for the scarcity. It’s about abundance and the infinite game. Plus why would we put walls up when we are working towards a common mission?!

Now here’s my take when it comes to collaborating with other communities. Generally speaking, I say go for it! However, there are few guidelines to keep in mind. For things to be a Culture First community gathering, this is what it must entail:

• The event and registrations process needs to go through Bevy. 

• Who we are and our principles need to be shared at every gathering.  

• We must honor our principle of ‘connection inside, business outside.’ Meaning, there is to be no pitching or selling at the gathering from any party. We also will not share our community members’ information (i.e. names and emails) with the co-hosted organizations. If attendees want to opt in to learn from them directly, they may do so following the event. 

Please reach out if you plan to co-host with another related community to talk it through. 

👷‍♀️ What are the Best Practices for Building a Community?
If you attended the annual Chapter Lead Virtual Retreat, you know that we briefly went through a deck walking through all the best practices of starting and growing a thriving chapter. Check out the full deck here.

🎗️Host a Volunteer Day for Social Impact Week (week of May 5th)
Every year Culture Amp employees globally come together for a thing we call Impact Week where we volunteer for non-profits, raise donations and clean up the natural space that surrounds us. This year, we'd love to have our Culture First community members join us by organizing a local event with your chapter! This could be anything from volunteering with your local food bank to facilitating an environmental clean up. It will be fun to see so many photos of us online all giving back together!

♥️ Host Belonging Badge Bingo in Person
This facilitation guide is a simple and impactful way to gather with your local chapter members. Neha Agrawal, Startups and Scaleups chapter lead, has taken things to the next level with the belonging badge bingo guide. She’s not ordered some physical pings but she’s also priced out a physical bingo card. Genius idea!