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In this issue...
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Web Site and E-mail Basics
By Jerry Thacker
Our increasingly complex society requires those in CPC/PCC ministry to combine "high tech" and "high touch" skills in order to meet the needs of clients, volunteers, and donors. This includes having an understanding of the uses of technology in communications and information dissemination. Two of the building blocks of the communications revolution of our recent times are e-mail and web sites.
Web site basics
Your center's web site is its electronic face to the world. At a very basic level, it should answer the essential questions about your ministry, such as: "Who?" "What?" "When?" "How?" "Why?" "How much?" and "How many?" It should display your hours of operation, street address, phone number, e-mail address, and perhaps a map showing major routes to your location.
If possible, you will want your own domain name, which usually takes the format: www.yourcenter.org. To see if your desired name is available, go to www.networksolutions.com and enter names until you find that a name you like is available. You can reserve it for yourself or simply note it for the builder of your web site to secure later. Registration and a small fee make the domain name yours for a period of years.
You could invest in a bunch of equipment and then design and host your own web site, but most people enlist a hosting service. (Call us at 888-944-9445 or visit the magazine web site www.atcmag.com if you would like us to suggest some hosting and web site providers friendly to CPC/PCC operations.)
Using e-mail you
can communicate
with staff,
volunteers,
board members,
and clients. |
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E-mail
While many of your clients may not have e-mail capabilities, your volunteers and board members probably do. There are many uses for e-mail in center work. For sending out monthly news, announcing urgent prayer requests, sharing schedules, etc., e-mail can be a great help. Keep in mind that people do not like to be overloaded with e-mail, and they are already getting e-mail from other sources. If you have personal communications directed to an individual, keep it friendly and to the point. Broadcast e-mails to your general list should be sent only about once a month unless there is an urgent need.
You will want to review your data collection forms from sign-in cards to pledge cards. Think about different methods you might use to collect e-mail addresses and start building e-mail address lists by type of contact. Keep your lists up to date.
As with most good ideas in marketing, the devil is in the details. Start today to take advantage of what these two modes of communication can do for your center
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jerry Thacker, B.A., M.A., is president of Right Ideas, Inc., and Publisher of At the Center. He can be reached at contact@rightideas.us. |
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