Evita Cult Community Scorecard
Evaluate your tribe and benchmark against the leaders
We have studied religions, cults, and businesses since 2009 and built more than a dozen communities of up to 250k people. Now we decided to structure our approach and share it for public use and peer review.

How can you apply the Scorecard:

1/ Evaluate your community and figure out how to grow and make it more sustainable and vibrant.

2/ Benchmark against the industry leaders and sneak peek at the best practices.

3/ Open the mind and structure knowledge about communities.
The Parameters
Mission
  • Metaphysical thesis: Electric vehicles are more eco-friendly than gas ones.
  • Clear vision of the bright future: Book/movie/art about the future vision.
  • Narrative: Book/movie/art about the origins of the movement and the story from the past to the future. Examples: Facebook movie, Satoshi, Books about Musk/Jobs, Bible.
  • Giving hope: Written/filmed step-by-step plan on how to become happy.
  • Emotionally supportive community: Internal community vibe of treating peers that makes people happy.
  • Shoutouts to the people: Daily loud shoutouts to main social media channels of the brand.
  • Secrets: Secret events/content gated by the contribution volume to the community.
  • People feel the power: Voting for something significant, engagement in governance.
  • Scapegoats: Vivid antagonist, could be non-personal ("capitalism" or "climate").
  • Icons: Book/movie/art about an icon. Or having a network of celebrities as ambassadors.
  • Internal motivation: People have palpable non-monetary motivation to join the community and actively participate.
  • Symbols: Easy-to-reproduce visual symbols that can "brand" anything in a moment. Examples: Christian cross, David's Star.
Communication Architecture
  • Active peer-to-peer collaboration to solve vital challenges: People make money, save money, launch businesses, or build products.
  • Active peer-to-peer collaboration to have fun: People regularly hang out together.
  • Structured network of ambassadors: Multi-layered structure of full-time ambassadors from borough to global.
  • Celebrity + followers: 5+ niche celebrities actively and publicly support the community.
  • Local physical chapters: Physical chapter per each 100,000 people in the served area.
  • Global outreach: Physical chapter in each macro-region (North America, LatAm, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania).
Mechanics
  • System of achievements / ranks / social statuses: Structured system of visible signals and ranks which define access to different perks.
  • Gamification: Solid storyline on how to get to success via many pathways.
  • Education: Structured education system for moving people through the storyline.
  • Leaderboards: Many dynamic public leaderboards.
  • Contests: Regular weekly or daily contests.
  • User-generated content: Daily posting UGC to the major community newsfeed.
  • Random events (raffles, lotteries): Regular weekly or daily events.
  • External motivation: Payouts as a person progresses or refers friends
Rituals
  • Onboarding: Onboarding process requires at least 1 person to "activate" new member.
  • Daily rituals: Specific daily rituals/events that community members do to keep their faith.
  • Weekly rituals.
  • Monthly rituals.
  • Quarterly rituals.
  • Annual rituals.
Integration
  • Collaboration with governments: Tight collaboration, specific regulation dedicated to the community, community members have significant positions in the government.
  • Collaboration with media/culture: Tight collaboration, own media holdings, own movie/books/art production.
  • Collaboration with large businesses: Tight collaboration, partnerships, associations.
  • Collaboration with science: Tight collaboration, sponsored research, labs, universities, schools.
  • Collaboration with other communities: Tight collaboration, partnerships, associations.
Commercial
  • Revenue / Marketing budget rate: Infinite (religions or Tesla)
  • YoY revenue growth rate / Marketing budget rate: Infinite.
  • 5-year retention rate: 80%+ (Catholic religions have 50%+ over-the-generation retention).
  • 1-year retention rate: 90%+.
  • 60-days retention rate: 90%+.
  • Community growth YoY in number of people: 1,000%+
Example Community Reviews
Tesla
Shopify
Jacquemus
The Table
Here's the Google Spreadsheet with the whole list of parameters and weights for the Evita Cult Community Scorecard. Feel free to copy the first sheet into a new file, and play around. We'd love to get your feedback via Twitter or email (g at evita one).

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