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Outreach

Outreach may be the responsibility of an administrator with volunteer help, or an all-volunteer committee. This can be a single committee or a series of subcommittees as the workload demands. This group identifies branding, messaging, and develops strategies to explain how Village meets the needs of older adults in order to grow the membership, increase the donor base, & inform the public on older adult issues. The Team also oversees the website, social media, and print media. Consider looking at some of the videos listed below to learn more about this function.

Public outreach

The Outreach Committee or Team will conduct regular meetings for the public explaining the Village concept and recruit members, volunteers and donors.  Some Villages create a "speakers bureau" to fill this need. Libraries, senior centers, churches, synagogues, rotaries, chambers of commerce, and newcomers clubs are all possible venues. Solicit invitations to speak to other organizations. Get attendees to sign up and indicate if they are interested in becoming a volunteer, member, or donor. Transfer the contact information to the database.

Place outreach meetings on the Village calendar Add Event

Bring sign up sheets and after the meeting enter contact information into the database as potential members, potential volunteers, and/or potential donors.  Record Contact Data Often the Outreach Team hands off responsibility for following up to the Volunteer Coordination team or the Membership team. See the procedures on how to follow up with Potential Members and Potential Volunteers.

Take photos at these events for use in the newsletter. Save Photos

Press relations

Write Public Service Announcements (PSAs) for local radio, TV, cable access, and news websites. Keep copies in the documents library. Outreach Documents

Monitor news articles about the village and place on Village website. News / Articles

Save contact information for press releases in the people database with a category of press.

Emailing volunteers, members, donors and others.
You should send out emails to volunteers, members, donors, and friends of the Village periodically. Volunteers typically get a weekly email reminding them of the need for services. If you have the Volunteer Self-Service feature, the email should be a high level message encouraging volunteering and containing a link to the online list of services.

Alternately there is a new feature lets you schedule an email an "Automated Open Requests" email containing a complete list of unfilled service requests. Each volunteer gets a personalized listing containing only the types of services they offer. This email contains a link that allows them to sign up immediately for a specific service. This email is automatically scheduled to go out on a daily or weekly basis (or some other period if you prefer). The text of the email can be tailored by your Village and can be personalized to incorporate the volunteer's name, the Village Name, and similar fields.

Members, volunteers, and friends of the Village should be sent a monthly newsletter listing events and news about your Village. Annual reports can also be mailed out.

The software automatically characterizes people in the database as whether they have attended events or whether they are donors. Members can characterize themselves by interest or by joining activity groups, Volunteers are characterized by whether they are fully vetted and which services they offer.

You can send emails to the whole membership or smaller groups of members. You can define and reuse email distribution lists that combine as many of these characterizations as you wish.

To help create emails for specific purposes you can easily copy similar emails and then revise the copy. Sent emails are retained for as long as you like. Click the Add Emailing button to create a new email. Click Distribution Lists to add, edit, or delete predefined emailing distribution lists. Email administration

Maintaining your Website
The outreach committee, or a subcommittee of it, can be responsible for maintaining the website and creating new pages as needed. This template provides the framework for your website. Content is often provided by other committees such as the program or activities committee. So website maintenance involves coordination with the other committees. Add/Edit Website Pages There are many ways to do this.
ClubExpress has many excellent videos on website maintenance. The videos on this page are most relevant to maintaining the website and should be viewed before significant work is done on new pages. Simple changes to the content of a page can be done directly on the page itself.

Maintain the Frequently Asked Questions.
The website team in the outreach committee can create and answer frequently asked questions. The call managers, who answer the phone and constantly talk with members can help by reporting what questions members tend to ask. FAQ

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News and Articles

Watch on Youtube

(10 mins.) Learn how to use the News and Articles function to create content that can be used at different places around the website and in emails.

Answer Types - New

Watch on Youtube

(0 mins.) Events, Surveys, Ad Hoc Forms, Collectibles, Polls, and additional member data let you ask questions… then members and/or non-members supply the answers. In most cases, you present questions and choose from any of the many Answer Types. We will explore them all. including text, dates, selection lists, checkboxes, radio buttons.

Ad Hoc Forms

Watch on Youtube

(22 mins.) How to use and configure ClubExpress Ad Hoc forms.

Emailing - Add an Emailing

Watch on Youtube

(24 mins.) ClubExpress provides powerful tools that allow administrators to communicate with members and non-members via email. This video shows how to create emailings.

Emailing - Administration

Watch on Youtube

(14 mins.) This video focuses on how to setup and configure the emailing module. Another video shows how to create the emailings that are sent to your members and non-members.

Discussion Forums - Using the Forums

Watch on Youtube

(14 mins.) This video is an introduction to ClubExpress discussion forums, mostly from a user’s point of view. Forum allowing members to participate in online discussions on a variety of topics. Original messages and their replies are organized into threads that are listed within each forum. Forums in turn are grouped into categories, allowing a club or association to organize forums for different purposes.

Discussion Forums - Moderation

Watch on Youtube

(12 mins.) This video is an introduction to ClubExpress discussion forums, mostly from a forum moderators point of view. The forums module introduces a new permission level that doesn’t exist in other modules: the “moderator”. Moderators can edit messages, add or remove individual members, set member flags (such as message approval required, member banned, etc.) and approve or block individual messages or threads.

Discussion Forums - Administration

Watch on Youtube

(25 mins.) This video is an introduction to ClubExpress discussion forums, mostly from an administrator’s point of view.

Text Messaging

Watch on Youtube

(19 mins.) Learn how to configure and use ClubExpress text messaging to send messages to member and non-member mobile phones.

Running Reports and Data Exports

Watch on Youtube

(11 mins.) Learn how to take advantage of the hundreds of built in reports and dozens of data exports.

Social Networking Setup

Watch on Youtube

(5 mins.) You can define a list of Social Networks supported by your organization. The entries in this list allows you to add social network icons to emails, and to pages on your website. When there is at least one entry in the list, sharing options are enabled for various pages and also for some administrative functions.

Blogs

Watch on Youtube

(9 mins.) ClubExpress includes a powerful Blogs function that allows knowledgeable club or association members to publish periodic articles of interest.

Surveys and Polls

Watch on Youtube

(22 mins.) The Surveys function allows you to create surveys on your website, to solicit feedback from members or non-members. Surveys can be used for many purposes, including learning what types of events members want to attend and which areas of a hobby or profession members are most interested in. ClubExpress also supports Polls, which are a single question, radio button, surveys that can be placed anywhere on your website via the content editor… for example, on the home page, custom web pages, content boxes, page header, etc.