e-BUSINESS
A PROMPT FOR REGIONAL AMENITY ASSOCIATIONS

Note: This “prompt” is addressed in the first instance to regional associations and is based on the arrangements that have been set up within the Association of North Thames Amenity Societies (ANTAS – (It could be called a “guide” but in practice each organisation will want to consider carefully what to do in each of the areas covered by the “prompt”.) The aim is to suggest to regional organisations how they might use the latest technology to communicate in future with their member societies, other regions, the Civic Trust and their other external contacts.

Much of the advice that the prompt contains, however, can be read across with very little change to individual civic societies – where there will be greater emphasis on communicating with (and influencing) individual society members and individual local councils (and perhaps less on national organisations such as the Civic Trust and Government Departments etc).

A. e-Mail
1. Within your executive committee and externally
Encourage all members of your Executive to get on to e-mail. / Your executive member may have a computer, but not use e-mail. Assuming they have a modem, be pro-active and visit such members with an appropriate CD (e.g. Freeserve) and get them up and running with Outlook Express (and Internet Explorer – see B. Internet). If possible, appoint an e-business Executive member whose job is to do this.
To minimise phone charges and avoid your member being discouraged from checking e-mail by cost, encourage them to register with a low cost (1p per minute, 1p minimum charge) Internet Service Provider such as OneTel.
Get each executive member to commit to how often they will check their e-mail: ideally once a day. / If they commit to less frequently, they will need to be phoned to tell them something is waiting.
Use e-mail within the Committee to: issue notices of Executive meetings and agendas; circulate drafts of policy proposals, publicity material and letters to the press. / You will be surprised how the ease, timeliness and cheapness of e-mail can improve members' enthusiasm and the tightness of your organisation.
Advise the Civic Trust of your e-mail contact point so that they can inform you of the latest information with their e-newsletter and any ad hoc communications. / [Perhaps the Civic Trust could be more pro-active in widening its e-distribution list and in the material they issue to alert societies to the latest news on their web site.]
Use e-mail externally to communicate with developers, Councils, Government regional offices, the Civic Trust and other interest groups. / Used in a cordial and not complaining way, the informality of e-mail makes for closer, easier and more effective relations with developers and Councils. Points can often be got across more clearly and with less ambiguity than on the phone, and the recipient has a text to work from. But there is still a place for phone (more interactive, particularly if there is a lot to cover) and post (more formal, less easy to ignore, easier to be firm without being rude).
Newsletters: these could be issued by e-mail but better would be your web site if you have one (see below). / As a regional association you may have quite a small print run but you probably require hard copies to display and pass round at your and your member societies’ meetings. So although an electronic-only newsletter would save print costs, it is probably not acceptable for you at present.
Be careful not to demotivate executive members who do not have e-mail or do not wish to use it. / This is difficult. Members without e-mail will easily feel left out if they continually find that members on e-mail have received communications that they have not. Be sensitive to this, and post copies to them when it is important. But in the end, these people should not hold back members who are able to use the new medium to make the Association's operations, internal and external, more effective.
2. With your member societies
Send a questionnaire to your contact in each society to establish whether they have e-mail, or if there is another executive member in that association whom it is convenient for the society to use as a conduit.
Also request e-mail addresses of other executive members of each society who might be willing to receive occasional communications from you (see below). / Realistically, not all your contact points will be on e-mail (either directly or through a willing conduit).
Use e-mail to send formal communications e.g. meeting notices to contacts who are on e-mail. / This will save you postage and generally speed up any replies, but is unlikely to save you time unless all your contacts are on e-mail.
Use e-mail freely to those contacts who have e-mail (whether the principal contact point of the society or other members of the society's executive) about current issues, or to alert them to new postings on your website (if you have one). / This will get your association more widely known, increase your influence (because, for example, your response to a Government consultation will influence theirs), help your member societies to form opinions and to inform their own members, and may lead them to help you.
3. Within your member societies
How your societies use e-mail internally is ultimately up to them, but you can encourage them to:
Get all their executive members on e-mail.
Communicate with you, their executive members and their external contacts by e-mail.
Issue a questionnaire (e.g. with annual renewal forms) to collect e-mail addresses for as many of their general membership as possible.
Issue e-mails to this list of contacts to get support on issues, remind people of already advertised meetings or inform them of short-notice meetings. / (The reasons are the same as for getting e-mail used within your Association.)
B. Internet
1. Getting your Executive on the Internet
Encourage all your Executive to get on the Internet. / See first item in 1a. The member will need a computer with a modem, and your e-business Executive member may need to help with this. But note that a member who does not want e-mail or does not want to commit to checking e-mail regularly may still have a use for the Internet which, from the user’s point of view, is a passive medium and perhaps less daunting than e-mail.
Get to know the existing websites that are helpful to your Association and its objectives and promulgate them to your fellow executive members, and to your member associations in your Newsletter. / This can help persuade your member societies of the value of the Internet and encourage them to make more use of e-communication generally.
2. Creating your own website
Create your own web site. / Building your own website is not difficult, but most accounts make it more complicated than it needs to be. (See separate document in preparation.) Almost all Internet Service Providers offer 15 megabytes or so of web space completely free. To get yourself a simple and memorable website address you will need to register the name (e.g. with EasySpace – c.£4 per year) and then either get them to host your site (c.£35 per year) or to redirect calls to your free web address (c.£4 per year). You will also need an html editor (which is much like a word processor) of which Microsoft FrontPage 2000 or 2002 is the most popular and probably a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) program to upload your files. Running costs are practically zero unless you want to employ a professional and to use graphic and animation effects that are not available under the basic hosting contracts.
Ideally your webmaster will be a member of your Executive Committee with the necessary skills, and in a good position to be pro-active without needing to wait for instructions. Your webmaster should not be a total novice to computers, but need not be an experienced web designer.
Your Association should be prepared to send a suitable member of your Executive on a local training course in web site creation if necessary
Ensure your web site home page contains the necessary “triggers” so that it is found by the popular search engines, particularly Google. / Most “hits” on amenity society web sites result from searches – most users cannot remember the Society’s web address from one day to the next but they do know the approximate name of the Society!
Include hyperlinks on your home page to the main areas of your web site. / There’s nothing worse than a website where you get no idea of the structure of the site when you first enter it.
Create one page of your web site to include details of your forward programme. / Yes, people really do come up to you at meetings and say that they wouldn’t have come if they hadn’t found the details on your web site!
Make sure your front page tells prospective member societies why they should join your association.
Include a page with contact details for the Society (e-mail and the Hon. Sec’s postal address and possibly phone number). / This is simply useful, particularly for prospective member societies.
Include a page with a list of the Association’s officers and photographs. / This is very helpful even to the leading members of your member Societies, who may not yet have put names to faces.
Consider whether to place your newsletters on your website. / If your newsletter already exists in electronic form for the printer, this may not involve much work. (It is most easily done by saving the file in html format from Microsoft Word 2002/2002.) But it is a controversial area because it can be argued that people will not bother to join a Society if they can read the newsletter on-line. (The counter-argument is that, having read it on line, they will want a nicely produced hard copy and, anyway, they will be more attracted to the Society for other reasons.) But for regional associations, where only a single copy may go to each member Society whereas all the executive committees will be interested and perhaps some of the ordinary membership too, the arguments are much more clear-cut in favour of web publication.
Put your constitution somewhere on your website. / Few people ever want to refer to your constitution, but when they do, they can never find it!
Above all, have an Issues page for matters of concern to your Association and where you are supporting, or thinking of running your own campaign. / This is not only valuable to your own member Societies and their members, but is equally useful to the Councils and commercial bodies you are seeking to influence. Your web page can make quite clear to them what your desires are – which often does not get conveyed accurately at meetings or in conversations. Experience shows that such bodies do look at your web site if they know it exists and contains information of interest to them.
Flag up these issues by name clearly on your Home Page (where the detail will need to change frequently). / This is absolutely essential, not only for people who may be idly browsing, but for those people (such as Councils) who come to your website looking for your position on a specific topic.
Have pages where you list your own member Societies, and where you include links to other organisations.
Try to avoid leaving it too long between updates. / Every 2 weeks is a good interval to aim for. The priority is to make sure that nothing gets too much out of date so that it looks uncared for.
Include a page where people can “register” with you to receive periodic e-mails to alert them to developments.
Install a hit counter to tell you how many times your website is visited. / This may be good, or bad, for morale, but at least you get to know the facts!
3. Getting people to visit your website
Include your web address on your Association’s notepaper.
Plug your web address and what’s on your website in letters to the press.
Send e-mails to your members and others to alert them to new material on the site, upcoming meetings etc.

3.4.2002.

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