There were some questions about how to handle our email list. I've put together some basic instructions for how to manage and mail to our lists. What we really need is someone who will consistantly maintain these however (add new people, move people between categories as their status changes, send out blasts as needed, etc.) Matt has also suggested www.list.org and an online way to handle mailing lists as well. May be worth a look.
The mail list function is pretty simple to use. Below are some basic instructions. With a small amount of work, we could get this set up a lot better. Next meeting let's discuss what mailing lists we should maintain for what functions and then I or someone can set it up so it's easier to use. Here's a rough list of lists we should have: - keyholders - active volunteers - interested in volunteering - friends/regulars - bike the talk - all who've ever expressed interest - etc.
The lists are held in the application called Address Book. There's a link on the menu bar next to the Mail icon. When you open it, there are three columns, Group, Name, and individual cards The "All" group is everyone in the system The other groups are subsets of "All", so if you add someone to the "New Volunteers" list, they also get added to the "All" list automatically. Individuals can be member of multiple lists or none as appropriate You can create a new Group by clicking the plus sign under the Group column. Then I think you have to manually add the names you want on the list. You can add a new name by clicking the plus sign under the Name column. If you have a sub-list selected when you click the plus sign, the new name will automatically be added to that list and the "All" list.
To send an email to a list: - In Mail, create a new email - Click the "Address" button on the top - A pop up appears that shows both the groups and the individuals. You can either select and individual or a group. Click on "To" or "CC" on the top to add them to the email recipients. I don't know how to add them to BCC which is the polite way to send mass email. But you can always select all from the CC field and cut and paste into BCC if needed.
I know there's more this program is capable of, but that's what I know how to do.
Good Start. What we need right now is some simple procedure(s) that any volunteer with basic Mac skills can routely update the 'interested in volunteering group' : I counted over 50 volunteer applications in a folder the other day, but have no idea how many, if any of these folks have had any kind of follow up. We need 1) an intial followup to see how many may still be interested ,2) consolidate to an active list and 3)invite them to some event , class meeting,etc to see if we can get some active participation..... Sounds like a regular task to keep one or more volunteers busy for a whileon an ongoing basis.....