[Ldsoss] Ward Website Email Broadcasting

[James Nickerson]

On Friday 15 December 2006 10:35, Mary Shaw grooved on as follows:
> One thing to keep in mind is that once an account is created, it stays with
> that member through all the wards.  Since I created my stake & ward web
> site account, I've moved twice and been in one ward reorganization.  I love
> knowing my online registration is linked to my membership record.
>
> My point is- account creation is a temporary problem.  Once every ward
> member has created their account, they will not need to re-create it.  I
> expect online registration will eventually become a routine part of
> baptizing/fellowshipping new members.

Yeah, and that has the potential to be really great, if people would ever 
create accounts.  The difficulty of acquiring membership information has been 
cited several times through the course of this thread, and that's certainly a 
factor...

Of course, recently our membership clerk printed off a letter to every member 
of the ward with their membership # and confirmation date, and also clear, 
detailed instructions on signing up for lds.org, and passed those letters out 
to pretty much everyone -- and still very few people signed up.  And I'm in a 
university singles' ward, which is probably about as tech-savvy/comfortable 
online as it gets.  We've encouraged the Elders Quorum members over and over 
to sign up for it, but instead they seem to prefer calling me for peoples' 
phone #s, when they have a computer with internet access right in front of 
them.  I get called at work for #s all the time, and of course all I'm doing 
is logging onto lds.org to get them, myself.  I really don't understand why 
people are so lacking in enthusiasm for such a convenient tool to enhance 
their participation in an organization that has a greater effect on the 
course of their lives than any other.  Especially in a SINGLES STAKE, where 
there is GREAT MOTIVATION TO HAVE EASY ACCESS TO CONTACT INFO!  It doesn't 
give me a lot of hope for the online presence of the church at large.


> That said, I'll tell you that e-mails are not sent by secure.lds.org in my
> ward (Falcon Ward, Colorado Springs East Stake).  I overheard someone say
> that is because it is "hit and miss" - because not everyone has an account,
> they cannot be sure the e-mail is sent to everyone.  They prefer to manage
> their list of e-mails independently of the web site.

Yeah, this could be solved by letting the clerk enter in peoples' email 
addresses, just like he can their physical addresses and phone #s.  Because 
he can't, we're stuck using the classic forbidden Yahoo Group approach, which 
has all sorts of problems in addition to bringing perdition down upon us all 
(because you can get peoples' email addresses from them at church, but you 
can't get them to sign up for lds.org and enter it in themselves).

James

> On 12/15/06, Greg Hart <greg at queezy.com> wrote:
> > As previously mentioned, the two biggest factors in my ward that cause
> > ward leaders to dismiss the usefulness of the ward website are 1) Lack of
> > support in MLS and the Ward Websites for *personal* phone numbers (cell,
> > work, etc..) and 2) Lack of user-friendly email lists.
> >
> > Regarding Email Broadcasting:  First, share email addresses between MLS
> > and the Ward Website.  It's a real problem that they're not synced
> > crrently.  Second, allow web admins the ability to subscribe/unsubscribe
> > users from ward email lists. Third, allow ward leaders listed on the
> > Leadership Directory (non-web admins) unmoderated posting rights to the
> > email list.  These would break down some major barriers.
> >
> > After that I would list the difficulty members have of registering.
> >
> > > 3) Could a member ask the clerk to send an 'invitation' to subscribe to
> >
> > a
> >
> > > member's personal e-mail account?  This could then be authenticated by
> >
> > the
> >
> > > user via their personal e-mail -- kind of like subscribing to the
> > > LDSOSS and other news lists.
> >
> > This is the solution I support the most.  It is essentially what my ward
> > does right now, albeit a custom perl script that parses Membership.csv
> > (exported from MLS), and email's the members their digits accompanied by
> > some simple instructions.  Just imagine if the clerk could enter a new
> > member's email address in MLS, subscribe him immediately to the ward
> > email list, see if the member is registered on the Ward Website, and if
> > not, click "Invite to Ward Website" which sends a helpful email with very
> > simple instructions.  How easy.
> >
> > more of my 2 bits.
> >
> > -Greg
> >
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