Books, Research and Learning for community builders

The core reading, plus the recurring research that tells you what the profession is actually doing.

Books

Get Together — Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh and Kai Elmer Sotto on building communities with people rather than for them. One of the most accessible introductions to modern community building.

Building Brand Communities — Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles Vogl on creating genuine belonging around shared values, rather than labelling a customer base a "community".

Richard Millington's books — Buzzing Communities, Build Your Community and The Indispensable Community. Between them they cover community management as a learnable and measurable discipline, deciding what community to build, and how a community program becomes strategically indispensable rather than peripheral.

The Art of Community — Jono Bacon's guide to collaborative communities, heavily informed by open-source practice. Especially good on contribution, governance and volunteer participation.

People Powered — Bacon on how organisations build communities that create value through participation, rather than treating people as an audience.

The Business of Belonging — David Spinks connects community building to business strategy and the deliberate design of community-led models.

Research and reading lists

CMX Community Industry Report — Recurring research on the state of professional community building: teams, priorities, budgets and emerging practice.

The State of Community Management — One of the longest-running research programs in the field, providing benchmarks on practice, maturity and the role of community teams.

History of community management resources — A map of the research, books, organisations and milestones that established community management as a profession.

The community professional's bookshelf — A wider reading list reaching past the core canon into belonging, leadership, facilitation and organisational behaviour.