Leadership Building Your Admin Team: How many are too many?

[Cedric]

Running a community comes with a lot of responsibilities, and having the right number of admins can make all the difference. So, let’s talk about it!

How many admins does your board have?
Do you fly solo, or do you have a team of admins helping out? Share what’s working for you and why you’ve structured it that way.

What do you think is the perfect admin-to-member ratio?
Is there a sweet spot when it comes to balancing admins and members? Does it depend on the size of the community or the type of content?

There isn't a one size fits all answer here, it all depends what kind of community you run of course.

Tips for choosing the right admins

• Trust is key: Make sure your admins are people you can rely on, even when things get tough.
• Balance authority: Too many admins can lead to conflicts or confusion, while too few might leave you overwhelmed.

Have any tips to share? Let’s hear your thoughts - what’s worked for you, and what would you recommend to others?

 

[Cloaked]

Starting out I do it all myself. Once the community builds I'll add staff. On an active forum I like to have 3 admins and 10-20 moderators. I also like to make sure they are from all over the World so there is staff available 24/7.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I start with just me.

When I hit 10 members, I look for my first moderator.

I don't add another moderator until it gets too much for me and my one moderator to handle.

And repeat.

That's my strategy, nowadays.

 

[Arantor]

Same as hiring staff for a company: bring someone else in when it’s too painful not to.

 

[Cory]

If I can handle the community myself, I see no need to bring another administrator on board.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I currently have only one other Admin on Gex Forums and Thee Zone. For the size of each forum, I think having one additional admin is fine. It really depends on the size and niche of your forum. If you've got a forum that's very active, you're going to need extra hands to help out! But if you have a brand new forum, with only a handful of members if it's not a promotional or service forum then you should wait to hire an additional admin.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

If I can handle the community myself, I see no need to bring another administrator on board.

I personally only have one admin. That admin is me. The only other personnel I add are moderators. I feel this is a better approach unless, of course, you need a technical admin or you and someone else are co-owning a forum. I have yet to go in on a co-owning forum in all of my years of being on forums.

 

[fdk]

Most of the forums I've ran in the past I have been the only admin. I've had moderators on all of my forums, but with the exception of the largest forum I ran for several years, which did have additional admins, I've never found the need for extra administrators.

The exception was a forum I run for several years that eventually had thousands of members. We were getting 50-100 new registrations a day, members were upgrading to premium features, and general requests that were coming in were too much for me to handle alone alongside continuing to actively participate in the community, which I felt was just as important. Therefore, I went all-in and recruited three admins - one person I knew IRL who came on board sharing my account. He would deal with everything in terms of email + PM correspondence about site/technical issues, which was a massive assistance. I then hired two admins who were members of the community that had been around since almost the beginning, one took on responsibility for handling moderator activities/actions/appeals, and the other took on the responsibility of assisting members with recovery of accounts with lost passwords and such (for some reason we had an unusually large amount of requests, and we had one particular problem member who would attempt to gain access to others' accounts).

That left me with the responsibility of just maintaining the forum technically, working on small additional features, participating in the community and just keeping an overall eye on staff. It was a huge help and a huge weight off my shoulders, because for a short period before I took on the new admins, dealing with everything had become so stressful as a teenager that I was considering just closing the forum for a while to catch up. I'm glad I didn't do that as in hindsight it likely would've been the death of the site there and then as a copycat would've likely quickly emerged, and luckily the forum continued for several years very successfully afterwards.