I'm late to this topic because we've had the flu in the house. 103.6 is a high temp!! Our club, Inland Sea Kayakers, is in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area of Minnesota. We have about 140 households at this time, with multiple paddlers in many households. I'm the communications director of the club. We have two primary means of communication, both electronic, both one-direction. We have a web site www.inlandseakayakers.org which is updated every couple of days. People do visit the web site regularly because it's where all events are posted and where you sign up for events. But the second method is the one which really reaches into homes -- and that's something called the ISK News Wave. This is an email newsletter which is sent to almost everyone. When they join the club, we take email addresses right on the application. Of our members, 93% are on email. It's not a listserve and it's just from the club to the members, using a "blind" list. The NewsWave is sent every other week, sometimes more if necessary and sometimes less (if the flu is here). In this, we announce trips, parties, dinners, pool sessions, when we need volunteers at an event, when there's a meeting (ok, even when two club members got engaged). Club members report this is the one thing that keeps them "in the loop" even when they haven't participated in any real way in a year. They know where we'll be, they know what we're doing, and they are invited. We had a message board for about 5 years which came to a sudden death last week. The first software I used (free from Matt's Script Archive) kept getting spammed, and the spam fixes were getting more and more frequent, and when I left town on a trip, man -- did that thing get nasty! I moved to another free bulletin board software -- Discus -- and this worked well, but we kept running out of space on our server. The bulletin board was where we intended people to connect with each other, sell used gear, buy stuff, etc. This worked okay, but was never highly used. However, the day it went down I sure heard about it! The feedback we get from club members has been that the NewsWave, the electronic update that goes out twice a month, is the best way we communicate. Granted, it's not between members, but this is simple to do and gets people involved. Jody Russell Eden Prairie, MN *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sat Dec 20 2003 - 14:45:18 PST
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