Engagement Challenge Ideas for Member Communities

Member polls, giveaways, and exclusive content are some of the classic ways that come in mind to boost membership community engagement.

But true engagement goes beyond that.

Today’s most successful online communities are experimenting with creative engagement challenges that inspire participation, teamwork and much more fun competition among members.

With this in mind, we’ve put together the 10+ best unique and practical community engagement ideas you can launch right away. From fun challenges to creative activities, each one is built to drive community engagement overnight in your membership site.

Or if you are just getting started? Start with your member community with these awesome community engagement activities and challenges

Let’s explore what works best for thriving member communities in 2025 and beyond.

Story Sharing Challenge

Membership communities can be kept engaged in the long run by choosing creative content-based challenges.

Sharing your story is one of our best battle-tested community engagement ideas.

You can ask your members to share their best childhood memories, professional success stories, favorite memories or life challenges related to your community’s theme or motive.

Wondering why it might work? It’s simple. When people open up, they build trust and friends. The very foundational of any successful membership community.

What’s more, Storytelling and sharing builds authenticity and emotional connection, a time tested membership engagement ideas.

Pro Tip: Create a “Member Stories” thread or use ARMember’s Social Community Addon to create a social network or forum-like space where all members can post, share, and comment on their own stories, creating a feed of shared experiences.

“Caption This” Contest

Looking for a quick way to spark laughter in your member community? Try a ‘Caption This’ contest.

Community engagement never has to be serious or goal oriented every time. Sometimes, it just needs to be fun.

Having a “Caption This” community engagement challenge is more like a fun activity.

Let your members have fun by sharing their best photos, memes, or funniest captions. You can also ask them to come up with new creative or witty captions related to your niche.

Further, you can theme this community engagement activity around your current events, community jokes or even upcoming launches.

Want to make it your top community engagement idea? Then you gotta offer small incentives. Make it like a fun competition where members submit their captions and everyone votes on the funniest or most creative one.

Now whoever gets the most likes, shares, or comments gets a feature in your paid newsletters, a shoutout on homepage or a custom ARMember badge for the week.

This way, you can boost comments and engagement both in one go!

Skill Share Challenge

Time to make the most out of your membership community by hosting a skill sharing challenge.

Every member who joins your community hopes to learn, grow, or achieve something valuable. So why not help them do that by hosting a skill sharing challenge?

Members can host their own online course related to the community’s focus. Here’s why, it’s a great opportunity to turn your member community into contributors.

• A fitness coach could share a short workout video
• A home chef can share its home made receipts
• A marketer might post a productivity template
• A designer could offer a quick Canva tutorial
• A game guy can share some cheat codes to master a level

In short, these mini lessons create a peer-to-peer learning environment where every member has something valuable to contribute and learn.

Bonus Idea: Use ARMember Online Courses Addon to let your community members create and sell their own courses and short lessons

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

If your community revolves around digital content like online courses, blog posts, or tutorials, a scavenger hunt can be the most exciting way to reintroduce members to your content.

You can hide “clues” or “keywords” across your membership site and drop the first hint in your community forum or email newsletter.

Each clue can unlock the next one, leading to a final prize or bonus reward.

Till now, this is the most fun and interactive community engagement challenge and activity.

Best of all, you can use drip content to progressively reveal your secret clues and keep your community members on their toes.

Community Bingo

Want your members to participate consistently? Turn it into a game!

Now is the time to create the top battle tested engagement challenge from our list of community engagement activities – Bingo.

Design a custom bingo board packed with fun engagement actions like these to skyrocket participation instantly:

• Comment on X number of posts
• Attend a live session
• Share a resource
• Welcome a new member
• Post your weekend goal

In this, members tick off boxes as they complete activities. At the end, those who finish a line or full board can win small prizes or badges.

Gamification like this can actually transform ordinary participation into a rewarding experience, something no member can resist.

Trivia Battle

Who doesn’t love a good challenge now, huh?

Time to host weekly or monthly trivia battle rounds about your community niche, product features or even fun trendy topics.

You could use simple quiz forms or polls to make participation much quicker and easier. Such as:

• A marketing community could run “Guess the Brand” challenges
• A tech community might quiz members on new trends or tools

Lastly, you can easily automate quiz forms and reward winners with bonus content or member perks.

Leaderboards and Badges

Time to spark a friendly competition by adding leaderboards and badges.

Everyone loves a little recognition. And leaderboards and badges are exactly what you need to turn your community engagement into a visible achievement system.

Afterall, what can be more motivating than the sense of satisfaction of seeing your name in lights (until someone knocks you off, of course) for all to admire?

What’s more, you can reward points to your members for actions such as posting, attending events or sharing content. And highlight your top contributors weekly or monthly.

The good news? ARMember is well known for offering a ton of awesome gamification elements like badges, rewards and points for gamifying your community experience.

Member Spotlight or “Hot Seat” Challenge

Your members are your biggest asset. So why not put them in the spotlight?

With the “Hot Seat” community engagement challenge, you can put each random member in the spotlight.

By featuring one member each week, you can let them share:

• Their background or journey
• Recent wins
• Challenges they’re facing
• Tips for others

Other than this, you can also host a “Hot Seat” session where a member shares their business or project and the community offers their own point of view.

In the end, the topic they talk about completely depends on the kind of community you have.

However, we can still say it’s a great way to celebrate your members and make each of them feel valued.

Blind Video Calls

Are you looking for some crazy and creative community engagement challenge ideas? You are in the right place!

Set up a “Blind Coffee Chat” or random member pairing challenge. Sounds interesting, right?

Well, this is one of the best community engagement ideas to make your member community feel more human.

Each week, pair random members based on their profiles or activities for a short 5-10 minute conversation via Zoom or Google Meet.

To not make things awkward, you can also offer an icebreaker question or topic to start with.

It might sound simple but personal conversations often lead to deeper bonds and good friendships, especially for learning, coaching or professional membership sites.

The result? Members feel connected, valued, and eager to return every day.

Best Tip: Encourage members to share a quick recap post afterward. It inspires others to join in next time and feel more safe talking to a new member.

Themed Photo Contest

Let us all agree that visual and aesthetic challenges are one of the easiest ways to boost engagement.

You can pick up a monthly theme for your member community like

• Workspace Setup
• Throwback Week
• Behind the Scenes
• Pet Day
• My Aesthetic Moment

and ask members to share a photo that fits the best.

Moreover, you can also encourage your members to write a short catchy caption about why they chose it or what it represents. Then all it left is to let the community vote for their favorites.

If you own a creative or lifestyle-based membership community, this is the go-to-get membership engagement idea

Additional Membership Community Engagement Challenge Ideas

Craving for some more creative and specific community engagement ideas?

Here are some extra membership community engagement challenge ideas just for you:

Skill Based And Collaborative Challenges

To boost collaboration within your members, you can host online Hackathons (good for tech based member communities).

Plus, you can also pair up some experienced members with newer ones to complete a project or starts a workshop

Content Creation And Sharing Challenges

If you are looking for some good activities for community engagement, content creation and sharing is one of them for sure, duh!

You can host community engagement challenges such as:

• Member spotlight challenge
• Themed content challenge
• Best project showcase and more

For a long term successful community, this is the best community engagement idea.

Gamified And Fun Challenges

Now we don’t meet anyone who doesn’t love the thrill of games! Adding gamification elements and game type challenges can boost your members participation up to 48%.

The best part? The gamified loyalty programs have seen a boost of 22% in members retention. You can host community engagement activities such as:

• Trivia challenges
• “Quests” or scavenger hunts
• Points-based challenges

Community Driven And Social Challenges

If your member community is filled with goal oriented people who want to make changes in society for good, these activities are for you.

You organize online volunteer challenges for:

• Virtual mentoring and tutoring
• Remote coordination with non profits
• Create online content to spread awareness

or if your online membership community is more of a social gathering and chill type, you can host events and activities such as:

• Workshops and webinars
• Themed discussions
• Virtual social gatherings
• “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) sessions

Ready to Launch Your Next Membership Engagement Challenge?

Community engagement doesn’t happen by chance, it happens by ideas.

From our expertise, trends and successful real life examples of community engagement activities, these 10 engagement challenge ideas can turn your membership community site into a place for fun, friendship and learning.

So are you ready to make your members contribute, collaborate, and celebrate with each other?

The best part is, if you are using a WordPress site for powering up your membership site or just laying the foundation, ARMember has got you back.

ARMember is a feature rich membership plugin for WordPress to boost your online member community. It comes with mind blowing community building features for boosting your members engagement with:

• ready-to-go user profile
• Directory templates
• Public member profiles
• User avatars
• Awesome gamification elements – badges, rewards, and points
• Flawless BuddyPress/Buddyboss Forum Support

Whether you start small with a “Caption This” post or build a full gamified leaderboard, ARMember has features for all.

Ultimately, To choose the best community engagement ideas, think about your audience’s needs and where they spend their time online.

Don’t be afraid to experiment but also keep an open eye on building a strong, consistent presence on just a few channels rather than spreading yourself too thin.

Related articles:

• 6 Outstanding Ways that Add Great Value to your Membership Community
• How to Build a Private Community or Forum with ARMember?
• How to Create a Community on Your WordPress Membership Website

FAQs About Community Engagement Ideas

How to boost member engagement?

To boost your members’ engagement, you can add some creative and fun community engagement challenges and activities. You can create polls, gamified challenges, member spotlights and exclusive content to keep your members engaged.

What is an example of a community engagement activity?

Here are the best examples of community engagement activities:

• Discussion forums and social media groups
• hosting a live Q&A session
• Creating and sharing content
• Virtual social events
• Online mentorship program

What is an engagement activity?

An engagement activity is any interactive action or a kind of challenge that motivates your community members to participate and connect.

What activities bring communities together?

Activities that bring communities together are those what encourages members interaction, , communication, collaboration, and fun: Here are some activities that bring communities together:

• Story sharing challenges
• Themed photo contests
• Virtual scavenger hunts
• “Hot Seat” or member spotlight sessions
• Bingo or trivia battles

What are meaningful engagement activities?

Storytelling challenges, peer learning (skill-share) and mentorship sessions are the meaningful engagement activities for membership communities. These meaningful engagement activities actually make members feel valued, heard, and connected.

How do you create a community engagement plan?

To create your own community engagement plan, you first have to think about your community members needs and where they spend their time online. Later, you can choose a community engagement activity or challenge. Then set the clear rules, and use gamification elements to boost engagement.