I received some great responses via email and comments on my previous post: Where does the community team belong in a commercial organization?

My point of view in the post was that the Marketing team probably makes the most sense, but I had serious concerns that most marketing teams can't really put their own agenda aside in order to have an honest dialog with the company's customers, prospects and partners.

Most responses I received gravitated towards the marketing organization, with Product Development and Product Support running close behind. A couple of folks recommended cross-organizational teams.

Joi Podgorny's comment was very encouraging in that she had made a decision to have her community team function as as a stand -alone organization.

We ended up having the online community live as an autonomous unit within the company. This was done for a variety or reasons, but especially:

- representation on the executive level - the only team that could voice the unique needs that the online community team had was the online community team themselves

- innovation - having to get approval for new plans/ideas, etc for the community and then seek approval from dept heads that didn't understand our core goals began to hinder the innovation possible on the team

Once our team had autonomy, the morale and inventiveness of our team soared.

After thinking about this a bit more, and mulling over all the great feedback and ideas that my original post spawned, I feel like the best options are:

- Stand Alone Team: The community team (off and online) has a seat at the C-level table and is empowered to run more or less autonomously.

- Part of Marketing: The community team has a director-level lead, and reports in to the CMO or VP of marketing. This would be a bit of culture shock, because a lot of senior marketing staff just aren't willing to give up control and the methods and tools they are comfortable with.

- Cross-functional Organization: The Community team is made up of folks from Product Support, Marketing, Product and the Web Team. A director or VP "owns" the virtual team and the budget. I like this option the least because of the likelihood of bureaucracy and the potential for team members to be serving two masters.

What do you think? If you have a point of view that you don't want to express in comments, or would prefer to have a conversation, please email me: bjohnston@forumone.com.