Communication
 

How does your chapter communicate important information outside of meeting? Email, mass text, facebook? just looking for some new ideas!

Carrier Pigeons

It really is going to depend on what the information is. For my chapter we use email and texting depending on how immediate of a response is needed.

My chapter uses all of those methods.

Keep in mind, regardless of what or how many different methods you use, you will always have your few that have trouble in the personal accountability/responsibility department that will never get the information because they refuse to to make it a priority to check for or seek it.

Effective communication means using all tools at your disposal for most effectiveness.

Facebook - used for events and stuff that's more than two weeks ahead
Email - same as with Facebook, but for more serious topics
Text messages - sent out on the day the issue needs to be taken care of (usually in addition to one of the above)
Phone tree - in case of urgent issues, use when no reply of text messages
Voicemail - when the phone tree fails

Two tin cans and a string. Or smoke signals.

Seriously - when I was an active *mumble* years ago, we used a phone tree and email. Nobody had a cell phone, Facebook didn't exist, and the closest we got to voicemail was answering machines.

GIN system - it's great!

Our Chapter set up a mass-text system. We have several different branches too depending on who you want to contact.

"actives.text@********.com"
"alumni.text@*******.com"
"pledges.text@******.com"
"EC.text@********.com"
"optin.text@******.com"

Our "optin.text" group is just for fun stuff like "Free Ice Cream in the Student Union at 2PM", or "Seeing a movie at 6PM text me if you want to come!"

It's really easy to set up too. I became the New Member Educator for my Fraternity this most recent year, and I decided to start up "pledges.text" from scratch. It took a little bit for me to figure out (not a computer person AT ALL), but once I got it, it was a breeze.

I go to a really big technology school, and one of our really tech-savvy brothers built us our own online discussion forum (just like GreekChat, but private for us). It's INCREDIBLY convenient, and it allows us to discuss a lot of stuff outside of Chapter.

I wouldn't even know how to set one up, but if you've got someone in your Chapter who is really tech-savvy, you should consider it.