Group Communications and making it REALLY work for you and your camps

 

A bit of rethinking this basic set of skills may yield some hefty dividends and better group participation

 

 Before becoming a Ranger, I spent some time running a public relations and marketing firm that eventually focused on the motorsports arena and finding sponsorships for a wide variety of NASCAR, ARCA, NHRA, and ProCup teams. Luckily, as I got into that line of work I had a terrific mentor that helped guide me along the way, offering sage advice and observations that helped shape a very sound approach in an often complicated and potentially compromising business. One of Neil’s homier proverbs had to do with communications and it was a simple and iron-clad rule. “Whoever it is you’re trying to reach,” he said, “ya gotta get ‘em where they is, not where they ain’t.” Not exactly rocket science, but it’s really amazing how we either forget this lesson or fail to incorporate it fully into what we are doing in order to get the maximum effect out of what we are trying to communicate.

 

This was driven home to me recently as a group of our volunteers began gelling together as an organized Construction Crew. Communicating what tasks we have and when we planned meetings and work dates proved to be more complicated than I ever imagined. In theory, I should have been able to just send out an e-mail or post card and that would be enough, but it wasn’t and for a long time the foreman of the group and I were frustrated that we couldn’t seem to get everyone all together until we realized that we were breaking the cardinal rule of “reaching them where they is”.

 

How? Well, we neglected to take into account that this group is actually made up of several generations of Scouts and Scouters, ranging in age from 15 to 68 years old. For a long time we groused about wishing everyone had an e-mail address, or that everyone would pay attention to post cards we would send out, but the fact of the matter is that each member of our group – and any potential future members – each had some preferred way of getting information that they actually paid attention to. It became pretty clear that to be truly effective in getting our messages out, we were going to have to use a number of different methods, not just one. And we were also going to have to define which way was preferred and what the best back-up form would be for each member if we were going to succeed in getting through to them.

 

5 methods of communication

            In a perfect world, we should be able to tell anyone something once for them to get the message and act upon it, but this isn’t a perfect world and when dealing with employees, repeating instructions or reminding them of dates is a good and accepted practice. When dealing with volunteers, even dedicated volunteers, the task is much more like herding cats and it forces good managers to cater a bit more to the idiosyncrasies of the individuals in the group. In a business setting you can frequently cut to the chase with some level of authority by sending out a memo or quick group e-mail, but with volunteers that strategy can quickly backfire, in which case you lose the very people you need most. But by simply “reaching them where they is”, you demonstrate that you care enough to communicate with them where they are comfortable or at least in the way that they prefer, and that will go miles in gaining cooperation and in finding additional recruits. So how exactly do we get our message out?

 

            There are essentially five categories that modern communication can be sorted into when trying to keep volunteers informed and to gain additional support for your projects. They are:

• Word of mouth – Spreading the word by talking it up is the oldest and most reliable for of group communication if done well or correctly. By that I mean that an invitation or appeal is usually far more effective that a rebuke or droning report. Be upbeat and try to encourage excitement or at the very least a sense of need. And this can be done one-on-one or to groups. One of the most overlooked tools you have in your arsenal is the power of your personal appeal, so be sure to visit Roundtables, make in-camp visits, and do any other form of “goober smooching” you can think of! In your group, this method is everyone’s job. All members should Promote! Promote! Promote!
• Snail mail – Post cards, flyers, and newsletters are the old standbys, and for good reason. But in this day and age, many tend to overlook the mail when it arrives. We are inundated with so much junk mail that when a valid piece of information arrives, we tend to overlook it. So make sure that you keep it very interesting or very brief. You can usually find someone who likes to do newsletters. It may even be a spouse of a member or younger Scout. Help them to become your written mouthpiece.
• Telephone – Using a phone list can be very effective. The easiest way is to find someone who is good at it (we have a former union leader who really knows how to work the phones) or create a phone chain the way many churches do with their Prayer Chains. This is essentially a notification tree where one person calls several others, and they, in turn, are assigned to call several others, and so on and so on. The danger with the “tree” is it’s only as good as those you actually reach and their commitment to pass the message on. Run into several young, distracted sons or daughters and a few spouses that are less than enthusiastic about your efforts and your phone tree will rot at the roots in a heartbeat and come to a screaming halt.
• E-mail – Since the early nineties, e-mail has grown to be one of the most common and effective forms of communication, but not everyone uses it and for many who do, junk e-mail is worse than junk snail mail. Junk communication so gums up the works that some changing addresses can be a real problem. Filtering programs and rules can also dump your group communications into a recipient’s Trash Bin before they ever know something worthwhile arrived. This is why having a back-up form of communication for everyone is so important. It’s wise to send out a test and respond message every so often to insure members are getting and finding your messages. If you aren’t much good at this, there should be someone in your group that you can enlist to get the e-mail message out.
• Facebook or other web communities – There are a number of community groups or programs out there, but Facebook is probably the strongest, cleanest, and fastest growing. In just five short years, Facebook has grown to a worldwide community of 175 MILLION. No kidding. And that’s not 175 million college students flashing body parts on-line. Facebook has recast itself as a great place for all kinds of professionals and individuals to find others with similar interests. Even church groups are using this neat communication tool, and for good reason. Facebook actually allows you to communicate in a wide variety of ways, making many web tools easy to use. In a nutshell, here’s how it works:
  • You begin by setting up a profile page for yourself. You really only need to provide your name and e-mail address, but the profile page allows you to provide as much (or as little) information about yourself and your interests as you feel comfortable with.
  • With your profile page established, this becomes your home page from which you can look for old friends, folks with similar interests, or members of groups you belong to. You can link to others having similar interests by accepting them as “friends”, which allows you to freely exchange all sorts of communication with them and let you know when they are on-line themselves. In addition to your profile, you get what is called a “Wall”, a page where friends can post messages or information about what they have joined or are doing is posted.
  • In addition to posting a global message on someone’s “Wall” which everyone on the planet can see, you can send private e-mails to other members or exchange chats with members if they are on-line. Both the chats and e-mails are private, just like regular e-mails and you can have a notification sent to your regular e-mail account to let you know when someone has sent you a message on Facebook.
  • Exchanging photos, video clips, or other forms of graphics is simplified, making Facebook a terrific promotional tool.
  • The Groups feature allows you to easily establish a group and provide a home base where a calendar of events, links to important web pages, dialogs, discussions, etc. can all take place with as many restrictions as the creator of the group cares to put in place.
  • What makes Facebook so powerful is it’s speed and convenience and the fact that almost anyone under the age of 28 has a Facebook page. In fact, the trend is that young people are abandoning traditional e-mail in favor of communicating on Facebook. In other words, if you are using traditional e-mail as a primary communications tool, there’s a really good chance you are actually missing your youngest members because that’s not where they are!

 

And that brings us to a very important point. It may not seem readily apparent, but various age groups tend to prefer different forms of communication. This is a generality, of course, and there are exceptions, but usually the older you are, the more conservative (and slower) forms of communication are what you prefer. In our Construction Corps for example, our older members tend to prefer phone calls or traditional snail mail since many don’t have computers or treat them with almost vile contempt. Middle-aged members usually prefer using the phone, responding best to a personal call, or use e-mail on a regular basis. But a surprise in all this was with our youngest members – those born since 1980 or so – don’t even use traditional e-mail, but are now using text messaging or a community like Facebook. It’s simply faster and easier.

We discovered by trial and error that if we concentrated on one form of communication, we could almost predict who would show up and who wouldn’t depending almost entirely on how the information was sent. So if we mailed post cards and called members, we could almost guarantee a turn-out of almost all older members, but if we sent out e-mails and phone calls, we got the middle-aged group. The Facebook crowd almost completely ignores anything that doesn’t make their cell phone chirp or computer beep, so “old-fashioned” answering machine messages left at home usually miss the mark entirely.

Since realizing this dynamic, we’ve been watching which forms of communication our members respond to the best. Since our group is still relatively small, this was a pretty easy matter, but even for larger groups, finding out which way is the best way to send a message is a prudent way to maximize the impact and effect of meeting notices, posting work dates, etc. In the future, we’ll be asking which top two ways members prefer to receive information and use one to back up the other. This means, that instead of mailing a newsletter to 1000 volunteers or group members, we may only snail mail 700 to folks who prefer snail mail as one of their top two forms of communication. To the 300 others, we may e-mail them a PDF of the same newsletter, provide them with a download link on their cell phones, or post it on our website for them to retrieve, whichever they prefer.

While this may seem like more work – and actually is in some ways – the benefits of communicating in this way in the long run will far outweigh the extra effort it takes to tailor the communication. For our small Construction Corps, this means that for a single gathering we’ll send out 10 post cards, about 25 e-mails, make another dozen or so phone calls, post an item on our website, and send out a group announcement to all our Facebook members. Add to that the actually face-to-face reminding and recruiting that goes on across the board, and we have a solid communications system that is far more effective in getting more volunteers out and promoting our efforts at the same time.

 

So here’s what to do…

 

1.      First, find out which way your members like to get news, announcements, and bulletins about your activities.  Be sure to have them pick a favorite and second favorite. Suggest the following:

a.       Word of mouth

b.      Postal mail

c.       Phone call

d.      E-mail

e.       Text Message

f.        Internet Community message (such as Facebook. Find out which one they are on or encourage them to go to one site, like Facebook)

g.       Posting to your organization’s website

h.       Other – specify

2.      Create notification lists placing each member in at least two of the categories.

3.      At least two weeks to 10 days before the event, do a mailing so the snail mail will arrive before the event.

4.      Have someone else who is good at it make the phone calls to those on the phone list.

5.      Have someone who is web savvy send out the e-mail announcement.

6.      Someone else who is good with texting should send out the text message to cell users.

7.      Post the event to your website.

8.      Watch your response and watch to see how far in advance your group needs to be notified. In some cases, a week will be fine, while for busier members, three or four weeks will be in order. In that case, adjust your timing so that members have enough advance notification to be able to plan for the event.

 

Three universals

            Even if you are doing all of the above, there are still three things you should do regardless of the communication preferences of the individuals in the group. The first is to publish a calendar of events as far out in advance as possible and make it available in as many forms as possible – printed copies you mail and hand out as promo pieces, PDFs on your website, etc. The second is to produce a newsletter or some other letter produced on a regular basis that, again, can be mailed, handed out, or made available on your website. Third, make sure you are promoting your group or groups by talking them up as often and wherever you can. As Ranger, try to get to as many council events as you can, and if you are close enough to get to District Roundtables or meetings, make a point of getting there every so often. Use those forums to update members of activities and opportunities at your camp – the personal appeal or invitation has always been the most beneficial of all communication forms. Together, these three form the universal dragnet of communication, but don’t make the common mistake of thinking this should be enough. In this day and age, it simply isn’t.

 

Thoughts on more effective Web communications

            Websites can be a great tool for communicating, but there are several developing trends that you need to consider so that you aren’t working too hard and missing your audience at the same time. First, writing web pages does take time – a lot of time in some cases – and for breaking news, announcements, and dialogs of any kind, websites may not be the best forum to use. The reason for this is most information of this kind has to change fast, faster than what most websites can be maintained at. Facebook and similar forums are much closer to realtime, far easier to maintain, and easier to post dialogs, exchanges, and so on. The drawback to the on-line communities like Facebook is that they are not (and never really were) intended to replace the vast quantities of information you can find on a website.

            In Scouting circles, websites are really just repositories and archives of important forms and information – great for the static kinds of promotional information that is needed to explain many things in depth. But the communities are where most of the young people are, and much more practical for rapid communication. The choice really isn’t one or the other, but to blend both into an effective tool. My advice is for most groups to use their website as the central information center and a community such as Facebook as the primary means of rapid communication with links back and forth between both. As communities develop, I think you will be seeing this trend more frequently.

 

Conclusion

            This may sound like an awful lot of work and it would seem to be a lot easier if you could get everyone onto one form of communication, but that isn’t realistic especially if you are dealing with a multigenerational group. If you have a club consisting of all retired seniors, then one communication form may work. The same goes for if you have a Venture Crew or Explorer Post that helps out. But in either of these cases, it still pays to understand which form of communication your members prefer. Regardless, you have to think of communication as an investment and not as a waste of time or necessary evil. Instead, remember that it can pay off huge dividends and gain you additional members and help. Like the man said, “Ya need ta reach ‘em where they is, not where they ain’t.”

 

Ranger Tim Bongard, Camp Acahela and Goose Pond Scout Reservation  

If you have any questions, or comments, please send them to tbongard@nepabsa.org .