Audience research
Part of Research prospective members properly before deciding what to build
The six people who sign off a community purchase and what each one needs to see
Build evidence-based community buyer personas around authority, member outcomes, operational constraints and proof required by each decision maker.
Six people who sign off a community purchase normally sit in different departments or organisations. They are the programme sponsor, the community operator, the member representative, the data and risk reviewer, and the procurement or finance lead. The technical implementer is the sixth.
Buyer personas for community work should represent roles in a decision, not fictional biographies. An English charity, membership body or council service may have one person sponsoring a programme, another running it and several others able to stop it. Their evidence needs differ even when they support the same outcome.
What to take away
- Most community purchases need six sign-offs, not one.
- The first three are the sponsor, the operator and the member representative.
- The last three are the data and risk reviewer, the procurement or finance lead and the technical implementer.
- Buyer personas should represent roles in a decision, not fictional biographies.
- Each role needs different evidence, even when they support the same outcome.
- Interview at least one real person in each material role and analyse disagreements.
- Refresh personas after a real buying cycle, removing needs that did not affect decisions.
- Avoid invented names and decorative photographs that make a composite seem like an individual.
The programme sponsor
The sponsor owns a business or member result. They may be accountable for customer adoption, membership value, professional learning or service quality. Their persona should record the decision they fund, the period over which they expect evidence and which competing investments they consider.
Sponsor stop-project threshold
What would cause them to stop the project?
record real funding threshold
vague engagement value only
What they need to see: a one-page outcome statement, the current baseline, a review date and the condition that would stop the work. In a charity, trustees approve spend under the charity's financial regulations. The Charity Commission's guidance CC3, The essential trustee, expects them to act in the charity's best interests.
Ask what would cause them to stop the project. This exposes a real threshold more clearly than asking whether they value engagement.
The community operator
This role faces the daily workload: welcoming people, programming activity, answering questions, moderating behaviour and moving difficult cases to specialists. The operator needs a credible staffing model, permissions, usable records and authority to make routine decisions.
Operator persona evidence
- Credible staffing model
- Permissions and authority
- Usable records
- Recent incidents
- Repetitive work
- Access to colleagues
What they need to see: weekly hours for moderation cover, a rota that covers evenings and weekends, the escalation path to a named colleague, and the permissions they will hold. Discourse handles moderation through trust levels and a review queue; Circle uses spaces and member roles.
Interview operators about recent incidents and repetitive work. Do not reduce their persona to a desire for an easy dashboard. Their judgement and access to colleagues may matter more than interface convenience.
The member representative
A member, customer-experience lead or elected committee may test whether the proposal serves participants fairly. This person will ask who can join, how rules are applied, whether quieter members can take part and what happens to contributions.
Member fairness questions
- Who can join?
- How are rules applied?
- Can quieter members take part?
- What happens to contributions?
What they need to see: join criteria, the rules in plain English, the appeals route and an accessibility conformance report. WCAG 2.2 AA, published by the W3C in October 2023, is the standard public sector buyers usually cite. Changing the rules of a members' organisation normally needs a members' vote under the constitution.
The Government Digital Service's user research guidance is designed for public services, but it demonstrates a useful discipline: involve users throughout design rather than substituting organisational assumptions for their experience. A commercial persona should likewise be grounded in actual interviews.
The data and risk reviewer
Privacy, information-security, legal or safeguarding colleagues may review the platform and operating process. Their persona must specify when they join, the material they need and the decision within their remit. Labelling them collectively as a barrier hides important differences.
Risk reviewer persona fields
- When they join
- Material they need
- Decision within their remit
- Governance records expected
What they need to see: a data protection impact assessment, a record of processing, a retention schedule, a processor contract and the sub-processor list.
UK GDPR Article 28 requires a written contract with every processor. Article 35 requires a DPIA where processing is likely to result in high risk. Organisations working with under-18s also follow Working Together to Safeguard Children, statutory guidance last updated in December 2023.
Security questionnaires often ask for Cyber Essentials, the NCSC-backed scheme run through IASME. Certification typically costs between £300 and £500 plus VAT for a small organisation.
The Information Commissioner's Office provides an accountability framework for assessing data protection practices. It does not approve a particular community model. It can help researchers ask which governance records a responsible buyer expects to see.
The procurement or finance lead
This person needs comparable scope, total cost, supplier identity, contractual responsibility and exit terms. Their concern is not necessarily the lowest fee. An apparently cheap licence may create staffing or migration costs elsewhere.
What they need to see: a three-year total cost of ownership, the same scope across every bid, the supplier's Companies House number or charity registration, and the payment schedule. Public bodies advertise above-threshold contracts on the Find a Tender Service under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Smaller purchases follow the buyer's own financial regulations.
Self-serve platforms such as Discourse, Circle and Mighty Networks publish list prices, usually in US dollars. For a small team these work out at roughly £30 to £350 a month as of 2026.
Enterprise licences from Higher Logic or Vanilla Forums typically start in the low five figures a year and are quoted per contract. Identity tiers such as Microsoft Entra ID P1 are listed at around $6 per user a month.
Use the buyer's own approval route. A persona copied from a large enterprise will mislead a small association where the chief executive, budget holder and service owner are one person.
The technical implementer
An information-technology or systems colleague may assess identity, integrations, administration, support and exit. Capture the evidence they require and the time available for implementation. Do not assume they own the community outcome simply because they configure the service.
What they need to see: the sign-in method (SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect), user provisioning by SCIM, the API and webhook list, a sample CSV or JSON export, support hours and an exit plan. Microsoft Entra ID, Okta and Google Workspace all connect through these standards.
Where no specialist exists internally, the persona should expose that capability gap rather than assigning invisible work to the operator.
Construct the set from evidence
| Sign-off person | What they approve | Evidence to collect |
|---|---|---|
| Programme sponsor | Budget and outcome | Outcome statement, baseline, review date, stop condition |
| Community operator | Day-to-day running and moderation | Staffing plan, rota, permissions, escalation path |
| Member representative | Fair treatment of participants | Join criteria, plain-English rules, appeals route, accessibility report |
| Data and risk reviewer | Privacy, security and safeguarding | DPIA, record of processing, retention schedule, processor contract |
| Procurement or finance lead | Contract and payment route | Three-year cost, identical scope, supplier registration, payment schedule |
| Technical implementer | Configuration and support model | SSO method, SCIM provisioning, API list, export sample, exit plan |
Interview at least one real person in each material role and analyse disagreements. Record the buyer's decision, authority and inputs. Add the risk, proof and timing each role attaches to it. Leave demographic or personality fields blank unless they affect the purchase and have evidence behind them.
Avoid invented names and decorative photographs that make a composite seem like an individual. Mark which parts came from interviews, observed procurement documents or project assumptions. A single buyer quotation cannot establish a widespread pattern.
Put personas to work
Use the set to review a proposal. The sponsor's outcome should connect to the operator's measures; the member representative should be able to see how participation is protected; the risk reviewer should receive evidence before commitment; procurement should compare the same boundary across bids.
Refresh the personas after a real buying cycle. Remove needs that did not affect a decision and add overlooked roles. Their value lies in improving research, evaluation and handovers, not in filling a slide with plausible characters.
Before you act
- Interview at least one real person in each material role.
- Record the buyer's decision, authority and inputs.
- Record the risk, proof and timing each role attaches to the decision.
- Mark which parts came from interviews, documents or assumptions.
- Use the buyer's own approval route rather than copying an enterprise persona.
- Collect a three-year total cost of ownership and compare identical scope across bids.
- Check the supplier's Companies House number or charity registration.
- Confirm who owns the moderation rota before the contract is signed.
- Expose capability gaps instead of assigning invisible work to the operator.
- Refresh personas after a real buying cycle.
Common questions
Who are the six people who sign off a community purchase?
The programme sponsor funds the outcome, and the community operator runs the service. The member representative speaks for participants. The data and risk reviewer covers privacy, security and safeguarding. The procurement or finance lead signs the contract, and the technical implementer configures and supports it.
What should a persona for the programme sponsor record?
It should record the decision they fund, the period over which they expect evidence and which competing investments they consider. Asking what would cause them to stop the project exposes a real threshold more clearly than asking whether they value engagement.
Why is labelling risk reviewers collectively as a barrier a problem?
Privacy, information-security, legal or safeguarding colleagues may review the platform and operating process. Their persona must specify when they join, the material they need and the decision within their remit. Labelling them collectively as a barrier hides important differences between these roles.
How should personas be used once they are built?
Use the set to review a proposal, connecting the sponsor's outcome to the operator's measures and giving the risk reviewer evidence before commitment. Procurement should compare the same boundary across bids. Their value lies in improving research, evaluation and handovers, not in filling a slide.
