CMX Community Industry Awards

The Finalists of the 2021 Community Industry Awards

Beth McIntyre

April 2, 2024

Awards season is upon us! The 2021 Community Industry Awards are the second annual celebration of the best in the community industry. These awards shine a well-deserved spotlight on the people and the communities who are making waves in this industry, making a difference, and building incredible spaces for their members.

2020 was a year the world will never forget, and this year, the CMX team is ready to celebrate our community members. Every single nomination for this year's awards was incredibly impressive—the challenges, the resilience, the success. With over 350 nominations, the CMX Community made it very clear we weren't the only ones ready to celebrate!

After all the nominations were submitted, we opened the vote up to our entire community. We received over 6,500 votes! Thanks to everyone who participated and made their voices heard.

Next, our panel of expert judges (the winners from the 2020 Community Industry Awards!) had a chance to read the nominations and cast their votes. We took into consideration the popular votes and, combined with the scores from our judges, determined the top 3 finalists in each category of the Community Industry Awards. I'm thrilled to share them with you.

Don't forget to join us LIVE on Community Manager Advancement Day (January 25) to find out who our 2021 Community Industry Award winners are!

The Community Awards

The Community Awards are given to outstanding communities that are raising the bar for the industry. These include:

Support and Customer Success Community

Members of these communities answer questions and solve problems for each other. This can also be a customer success platform, where members help each other to use a product more successfully.

Our finalists:

Product Ideation, Innovation & Feedback Community

Members share ideas and feedback in a community driving innovation and improvements for a given product. Companies can leverage this community for innovative feature ideas, or to identify the most needed product improvements.

Our finalists:

Acquisition and Advocacy Community

Members of these communities are ambassadors and advocates who drive awareness and growth for a given business.

Our finalists:

Content and Programming Community

These are communities contributing the content that makes up a given product or its assets. Collaborative consumption, crowdfunding, user-generated content, asset marketplaces and open-source communities are some examples.

Our finalists:

External Engagement Community

Members of these communities have a common interest related to a given brand or product. By identifying the common interests of their target customers and building relevant communities, these companies drive loyalty, advocacy, and, sometimes, sales.

Our finalists:

Internal Engagement Community

These communities connect employees, suppliers, or vendors to deepen engagement for those working with a given brand or company.

Our finalists:

The Professional Awards

The Community Professional of the Year Awards are given to outstanding individuals working in community.

Community Professional of the Year for an Independent Community

This person runs a community that is not affiliated with any brand or organization.

Our finalists:

Community Professional of the Year for an Education Community

This person runs a community space for an education or education technology community or organization.

Our finalists:

Community Professional of the Year for a Developer Relations Community

This person runs a community space specifically to bring software developers together to learn from, and connect with each other.

Our finalists:

Community Professional of the Year for a Gaming Community

This person runs a community space that brings gamers together to learn from, and connect with each other.

Our finalists:

Community Professional of the Year for a Nonprofit Community

This person runs a community space for a nonprofit organization.

Our finalists:

Single Moms Indonesia
Makesense
Grow Remote

Community Professional of the Year for a Virtual Events Community

This person runs a community program that hosts virtual events on behalf of a brand or organization. Note: This could be a new program, or an in-person events program that adapted to virtual events due to the pandemic.

Our finalists:

Professional of the Year Leading a Field Marketing Program

Field marketers are often community leaders too, and this year this group of individuals has showed incredible resiliency during the shift to virtual.

Our finalists:

Community Professional of the Year for an Enterprise (B2B) Community

This person runs or manages a community that brings users and super-fans of a B2B brand together to meet, connect, and learn from each other.

Our finalists:

Community Professional of the Year for a Consumer (B2C) Community

This person runs or manages a community that brings super-fans of a consumer product together to nerd out with each other!

Our finalists:

Executive Leader of a Community Team

This person is a leader of community professionals. They manage a team of community managers, and are an executive leader of a community team.

Our finalists:

The Best of the Year Awards

Think of these as essentially the Best Actor/Actress and Best Picture for the Community Industry Awards.

Community of the Year

This award is given to a community that has shown resilience, growth, and incredible success over the course of 2020.

Our finalists:

Community Professional of the Year

This award is given to a community professional that has shown amazing resilience in their work, continued to grow and support their community, and had tangible success over the course of 2020.

Our finalists:

Join us on Community Manager Advancement Day, January 25th, for our LIVE awards ceremony for the 2021 Community Industry Awards! Congratulations to all of our nominees!