What goes in a community member growth dashboard?

A member growth dashboard answers "is the community actually getting bigger, and where do new members come from?" — new joins, the members who went quiet, net growth, and whether each joining cohort sticks around. It lives or dies on one decision you have to write down: what counts as an active member.

Which cards belong on this dashboard?

• New members this month vs. the same point last month
• Net member growth: joins minus members who went inactive
• Member growth rate by month
• Joins by source (search, referral, product, event, invite)
• Cohort retention: share of each join cohort still active by month
• Time from signup to first post
• Active members by month against total registered members
• Members who never posted, as a share of registrations

What data does this dashboard need?

• A member table with a stable member ID and a join timestamp
• Activity events (posts, replies, reactions, logins) with member IDs
• An explicit, documented definition of an active member
• Acquisition source on the member record, captured at signup
• Deletion and anonymization flags, so removed accounts don't rewrite history

How do you build it?

1. Land forum, community-platform, and event data in a database and keep member IDs, post timestamps, event IDs, and RSVP status.
2. Build models at the grain this dashboard needs, with the active-member window and the check-in rule as explicit columns.
3. Create one saved question per card and certify the shared models and definitions.
4. Add dashboard filters for Date range, source, member segment, platform or space, first-post status.
5. Show data freshness and the definitions in use — community exports run on a schedule, and every viewer should know what "active" means here.

Example card SQL

WITH months AS (
  SELECT generate_series(
    date_trunc('month', CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '12 months'),
    date_trunc('month', CURRENT_DATE),
    INTERVAL '1 month'
  )::date AS month
), joins AS (
  SELECT
    date_trunc('month', joined_at)::date AS month,
    COUNT(*) AS new_members
  FROM community_members
  GROUP BY 1
), active AS (
  -- "Active" here means at least one post or reply in the month.
  -- Swap in reactions or logins if that is your definition, but say
  -- which one the dashboard uses.
  SELECT
    date_trunc('month', p.created_at)::date AS month,
    COUNT(DISTINCT p.member_id) AS active_members
  FROM community_posts p
  GROUP BY 1
)
SELECT
  m.month,
  COALESCE(j.new_members, 0) AS new_members,
  COALESCE(a.active_members, 0) AS active_members,
  COALESCE(a.active_members, 0)
    - LAG(COALESCE(a.active_members, 0)) OVER (ORDER BY m.month)
    AS net_active_change,
  ROUND(
    100.0 * (COALESCE(a.active_members, 0)
      - LAG(COALESCE(a.active_members, 0)) OVER (ORDER BY m.month))
    / NULLIF(LAG(COALESCE(a.active_members, 0)) OVER (ORDER BY m.month), 0), 1
  ) AS active_growth_pct
FROM months m
LEFT JOIN joins j USING (month)
LEFT JOIN active a USING (month)
ORDER BY m.month;

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