Encouraging Members to Use Unit Websites

[mkmurray]

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Emrol

Yep, that's got to be it then. Thanks.

[zaneclark]

I do several things to encourage members to sign up:

1. I have my name with contact information in every ward bulletin.

2. I enclose a brochure with the bulletin every few months explaining the features of the web site.

3. I periodically invite myself to the ward council to talk about the web site.

4. I print out a custom list from the MLS with the members names and member number and confirmation dates. I carry this with me in a binder at church so if anyone expresses interest, I have the information they need to register. I also carry in the same binder a list copied from the web site of all the registered members with their user name. When they forget their information and can't log in, I can help them immediately.

5. Every few months I send an email to the leaders of each organization listing those people in their group who have not registered.

To encourage those who have registered to keep using the site, I broadcast an email to them every couple of weeks pointing out features of the website.

I am also the stake web administrator and try to get the other wards to use some of these ideas.

And in case you ask, yes, I am retired and so have time for all this fun!

[opee]

I do several things to encourage members to sign up:

So what is your success rate? How many members have signed up in our unit vs. how many have not?

[zaneclark]

So what is your success rate? How many members have signed up in our unit vs. how many have not?

There currently about 130 signed up. I have no way of knowing how many are actively using the site. My goal right now is to work on the leaders. Once I can convince them of the value of he site, then they can encourage others in their organization to join.

zane

[zaneclark]

Good news I hope.... I have been invited to meet with our Stake Presidency to discuss stake and ward web sites and policies. As the stake web administrator, I have been discouraged by the lack of interest of the wards in keeping their web sites current and encouraging members to register. This meeting is a result of an email I sent to the president which included the letter from the 1st presidency concerning the discontinuing of ward web sites and email groups. There are several of these email groups in our stake and when I found the letter from SL on this forum, I was concerned about my role in getting this information to the wards and I expressed this to the President... I hope this meeting can be the stimulus for getting the wards on track with the LUWS..

[zaneclark]

Good news I hope.... I have been invited to meet with our Stake Presidency to discuss stake and ward web sites and policies. As the stake web administrator, I have been discouraged by the lack of interest of the wards in keeping their web sites current and encouraging members to register. This meeting is a result of an email I sent to the president which included the letter from the 1st presidency concerning the discontinuing of ward web sites and email groups. There are several of these email groups in our stake and when I found the letter from SL on this forum, I was concerned about my role in getting this information to the wards and I expressed this to the President... I hope this meeting can be the stimulus for getting the wards on track with the LUWS..

Excellent meeting with the stake presidency this morning! I think it will help to get the wards to work with their web people. He wants me to meet with them on a regular basis to work on stake and ward web concerns. The president did have one question though and I told him I would try to get some feedback on it. He has a couple of different email groups that he uses, including one to the bishops in the stake. He wondered if this would be permissible or does it fall into the "discontinue all email groups" statement from the letter. The broadcast list of categories does not include a listing just for the bishops, only the entire bishopric. I guess the broader question would be the definition of an email group. Any ideas?

[russellhltn]

I guess the broader question would be the definition of an email group. Any ideas?

I'd say that Yahoo groups, or Google groups is an email group. Now, if he was to use the "group" that's part of his email client, that would be acceptable. And for a list of bishops in the stake, that seems quite manageable. Some people might have to learn "reply to all".

[zaneclark]

I'd say that Yahoo groups, or Google groups is an email group. Now, if he was to use the "group" that's part of his email client, that would be acceptable. And for a list of bishops in the stake, that seems quite manageable. Some people might have to learn "reply to all".

How official is this interpretation of email groups? Do you think that is what the brethren had in mind when they used the term email groups? It never occurred to me that they might be speaking only of the Yahoo type groups. This means that anyone who wants to put together a group on their own email client would be complying with the published policy. If this is the case, I have just lost my best argument for getting members to register and use the LUWS! Dang.... back to the drawing board.....

[aebrown]

How official is this interpretation of email groups? Do you think that is what the brethren had in mind when they used the term email groups? It never occurred to me that they might be speaking only of the Yahoo type groups. This means that anyone who wants to put together a group on their own email client would be complying with the published policy. If this is the case, I have just lost my best argument for getting members to register and use the LUWS! Dang.... back to the drawing board.....

The interpretation is certainly not official. The policy is what it is, and your local stake president and bishop have the responsibility for interpreting it, barring any additional clarification from the Church.

I don't see how you lost an argument for using LUWS. Any private email group on someone's local machine has to be constantly updated as positions change. But assuming the leadership directory on LUWS is kept updated, everyone who uses LUWS can simply continue to use the leadership directory to send messages, whereas all those members who have private groups have to keep updating them.

[russellhltn]

How official is this interpretation of email groups?

The only thing official is the policy itself.

Let me try again to explain my understanding. There are "groups" in personal email clients that are nothing more then a short cut to placing multiple email addresses in the "to" field. Since there is no prohibition on using email, it doesn't make any sense to me to prohibit the use of a "group" of addresses. It takes more mouse clicks, but you can do exactly the same thing manually. The only concern I can see here is that done improperly, someone may expose the all the email address of the group. That's considered bad form, but I don't know as that's considered a breach of personal information.


On the other hand are "email groups" or "list serve" where you send a single email to a computer and then it copies everyone who belongs to that group. (Yahoo groups and Google groups being a couple of popular examples.) Given that the server is usually 3rd party, and a large group is hard to keep track of, I can see the concern over who may have access to these emails. Much of the same concerns expressed about unauthorized web pages exists with such email groups. So it seems logical to me that's what was intended.