In my case I tried to move beyond my research by opening my initial data collection to the community I'm studying, and make it available using CC-BY, it's in this repository. I also turned one chapter of my thesis into a comms article about the history of the community. In all cases I use open source software that allows collaboration (either git or wikibase) + CC licenses for content, in an effort of maximizing reuse of the content and make it easy for people to update, modify what I do.
Besides that, I quickly realized that I new almost everyone in the community and that I had the network of people in my head, which was bizarre because most people in the community had a hard time getting this general picture. So I started monthly community calls for folks to talk more to each other about what they do. I'm still trying to figure out a mechanism to keep these going as I don't have time to organize them now; some people contacted me to say they were useful. This is a key question for me, how are my efforts here going to be sustained in time (if the community finds them useful), after I move out somewhere else. I also associated with people in the community doing educational projects as I think this "general view" is useful there.
I'm more committed now to the regional - LatAm community, which is the focus of my research. I have a more active role there and I've used my academic credentials to fundraise, e.g. for facilitating community strategy and discussions. These can't happen just on a voluntary basis, and people in the group who are not affiliated to university find it hard to sustain their participation.
