Phone tree
 

Hi guys,

I am a newly initiated member of my fraternity (Lambda Chi Alpha), and I have been elected to the position of High Gamma (Secretary) for 2010-2011.

One of my jobs as the secretary is to build stronger chapter communication - historically done in the form of phone trees. Basically, the way it works is that I send out a text message or make a telephone call to a small group of members, and then each one of the members sends the message either via calling or texting it to another group of members. The idea is that a message that originated from me is sent to every member of the organization in a short amount of time.

Lately, we have been having a lot of trouble with the messages getting out in a timely manner - people "don't get them," they're miscommunicated, etc. To make matters even more complicated, the chair in charge of Brotherhood, the High Beta, has stressed that everyone calling one-another increases the bonds among our members, and has made it clear that he would like to see them be made into call-only phone trees (with no texting). The obvious problem here is classes and other activities - there is no way I can expect three guys to always have the time to call eight other guys.

So that leads me to a question - how do you guys typically handle this within your chapters? Are phone trees the most efficient method? And do they really build bonds among members of the chapter? What are some of the guidelines or rules you have for these?

Thanks,

Uh, we sent out mass e-mails. Why mess around with a phone tree?

We have mass e-mailing too, but the two problems with that are that 1. it is not as fast because not everyone sits at a computer most of the day, and 2. when we have sent them out, brothers have tended to not read them, or not read them thoroughly and send back the (usually required for e-mail) necessary feedback.

If they have facebook on their phones, they have e-mail on their phones.

If they're not sending back the necessary feedback that's their problem, not yours.

Also, what is *so urgent* that it can't wait an hour or so to be responded to?

This. In the days before emails and text messages, phone trees made sense. Now, I don't see the point.

And no, they do nothing to build bonds.

Back in the day (gosh, I hate that phrase), phone trees existed for urgent information to be disseminated to a large number of people (emergency meeting, time/location change for an event, everyone bring a ----- to the event).

Initiating a phone tree was appropriate for short pieces of information only. Any large amounts of information will likely become diluted (ever play the telephone game as a kid?). The modern-technology equivalent is a text blast. For less-than-urgent info, send an email blast. If people don't reply by the deadline, CALL THEM.

If you send too much info too frequently, people won't see it as anything special or timely. Reserve the blasts for specific occasions.

Handle routine matters at meetings. This is a good time to remind members of the importance of responding emails sent with a deadline. Again, don't do it too frequently, or people will ignore them.

As for "building bonds," I don't see how that's possible via a phone tree. Why are people so afraid to do things in person these days??

I agree with everyone above pretty much.

The one thing I wanted to add though is that the first person on a phone tree usually has multiple branches to call, but after that, at least with the one's I've been involved with, as well as my parents as teachers, involved calling only one person. If that person was not available, you would leave a message and call the next person on the branch to ensure it keeps going.

Yeah unless it's something like "OMG THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!!" email and the delay associated with it is perfectly fine.

Phone trees suck, but you already know this.

My chapter uses wiggio - it's a free service that sends out mass e-mails, mass texts, conference calls, store meeting minutes and documents, keep an event calendar, etc. You can also poll members - we don't really use the poll because that's kind of what chapter meetings are for.

Have you thought about setting up a twitter account?

Look into mass text messaging services. You can find a ton of them online for free, and they are a great way to reach everyone at once for quick, last-minute announcements!

I can only think of a couple of times we did phone trees, most of our official chapter correspondence outside of meetings was through our email list. I like the idea of a twitter account if it's public info, otherwise maybe use a facebook group?

In my chapter, we do mass texts. It usually works.

For real critical things, we ask for a response, and if we don't get one, we call them.

Do you have a blackberry? If you do, you can create a group on your phone and add all the members to your phone book and then to the group. Then you can mass-text everyone at one time.

Don't twotter and facebook have a larger chance of getting hacked?

I would stick with mass texting.