The challenge: a fragmented community with nowhere to call home
For years, RCOT’s community was organized around specialist sections and regional branches, but the experience wasn’t the same for everyone. Some members had to pay extra to join certain specialist communities, so community was an added layer for some, not a core part of membership.
When members wanted to connect, everything had to go through the central team. As Dr Christina Fuentes Tibbitt, Communities Manager at RCOT, explains: “If they wanted to communicate with each other, if they wanted to share information, everything had to come through us, which was really limiting, and we just didn’t have capacity to support that.”
RCOT wasn’t just looking for a new platform, it was redesigning its entire communities model while launching a new website and CRM at the same time. The real challenge was rethinking how members would find one another, access communities of practice, and engage in a way that worked for everyone.
The solution: one open community model built around networks, groups, and practical connection
Rather than recreating the old specialist sections in a new system, RCOT started fresh. Using Hivebrite, the team built an open, network-based model where community membership is included as standard, not sold as an add-on.
Groups became the foundation of that experience, built around practice areas, regions, and specific member needs. They’re member-led spaces where people share information, ask questions, and look for connections, without needing the central team to broker every interaction.
“The platform enables our members to find each other, to find people they want to communicate with, but also to find topics and discussions they’re interested in, to make connections in a way we just weren’t able to facilitate previously,” Christina explains.
RCOT continues reviewing which groups are thriving, which should be merged, and where simplification would help.
The team also moved quickly on Hivebrite’s AI capabilities, adopting them wherever they solved a real problem. AI moderation gives community managers a faster, less manual way to spot issues across busy group activity, while Orbiit-powered member matching connects relevant peers automatically, so members no longer have to search manually or wait to be introduced.
How RCOT uses the community today
RCOT runs its community through groups that support practice networks, regional communities, and targeted spaces built around specific member moments. That last point has proven particularly powerful: when RCOT launched a group to support members through a CPD audit process, signups spiked immediately.
The lesson: members engage more readily when the community solves a concrete problem, so the team has moved from broad awareness campaigns to creating clear, specific reasons to participate.
Beyond groups, RCOT is building out events and activities to deepen the value of joining, with AI moderation helping surface issues at scale, without removing human judgment from the loop.
The impact: a more inclusive model, steady growth, and stronger engagement
The biggest shift is structural: RCOT has moved from a fragmented model to an open one where digital networks are part of the core member experience.
The platform reached 4,000 members by October 2025, over 5,200 by December, and around 8,000 by early 2026. And members aren’t just registering. 73% immediately connected with at least one specialist group, and 11% of activated members are actively interacting every month. Christina says the group spaces are where that momentum is most visible: “We’re really seeing that flourish in the first year since we’ve launched the platform.”
Engagement has spiked around the moments that matter most to members. During OT Week, the community saw 85 comments in a single day and 30 to 40 new registrations daily. A separate event drove 100 new registrations in one day. The pattern is consistent: tie the community closely to what members care about, and the activity follows.
The community didn’t just change the member experience. It changed how RCOT’s own teams work. Colleagues now use the groups to connect with members directly, consult on specific issues, and feed into marketing campaigns.
As Christina puts it: “It’s really improved not only our member-to-member connections but also our connections as an organisation with our membership.”
RCOT also has a clearer picture of its membership than ever before, with direct access to feedback and opinions changing how the team works across the organisation.
Why RCOT builds on Hivebrite
Hivebrite gives RCOT the infrastructure to run a more open, more adaptable community, without replicating the limitations of what came before. One platform now supports practice networks, professional collaboration, targeted member spaces, and emerging capabilities like AI moderation and peer matching.
For RCOT, that matters because the platform isn’t just hosting conversations, it’s turning communities of practice into something more inclusive and central to membership itself.
