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April 2020
My brothers,
I am taking a little different tack in this article, as we try to adjust to life under the new reality of the Conoravirus pandemic. Our normal ways of meeting and taking care of business do not comply with our guidelines from Washington State Department of Health and Supreme (please see the links in the State Advocate article for more details).
As I write this article, we have had to cancel many gatherings at the state level, and I know Councils have canceled meetings and events. How can we take care of business and each other during this time? I want to share with you some ideas and tools that you may use to help you stay in touch with your Council members, conduct business and may also be leveraged in our personal lives. New times require new tools and ways of doing business, and I hope these may guide or even inspire you!
Supreme has created guidelines and technology recommendations for online meetings, presented below.
I will break the technologies into three sections:
1. Meeting tools - video and phone 2. Voting tools 3. Communication tools
Meeting Tools The guidelines prohibit in-person meetings, so we must leverage technology to meet. There are multiple different applications you can use for free or low cost video meetings:
Skype - https://skype.com Part of the Microsoft Office suite, it can be used for video meetings of up to 25 people. This is a free option and is relatively easy to use
GoToMeeting - https://gotomeeting.com This is a cost option - $12-$20/month depending on the option selected. You can have a maximum of 26 people in a video chat but host a webinar of 1,000 people. This is a moderate difficulty option. Cisco WebEx - https://www.webex.com - 100 participants - no time limit - call in for audio. This is a free option with paid upgrades for more participants and services. Zoom - https://zoom.us - 100 participants, 60 minutes maximum for the free version - can upgrade to paid versions of the tool. This is a relatively easy option to use. Google Hangouts - https:/hangouts.google.com - 24 maximum participants for video - 150 for chat - free with google account. FreeConferenceCall.com - https://Freeconferencecall.com - free service - up to 1,000 call participants and is a relatively easy option FreeConference.com - https://Freeconference.com - a free service with up to 1,000 call participants. Voting Tools One of the most important functions of a Council meeting is taking a vote to conduct business. When meeting in a remote session, you will need to have a tool that can take a poll or a vote quickly and efficiently. Below are some tools for your consideration:
Survey Monkey - https://surveymonkey.com - free and paid versions, depending upon the number of survey participants and questions.
Doodle Poll - https://doodle.com/en/ - a free service that allows you to create ballots, vote on motions, etc. This is a relatively easy option to learn and implement.
Google Forms - https://forms.google.com - a free service for taking polls and votes. It is supposed to be a relatively easy option to learn and implement.
Communication tools will allow you to keep in touch with your Council members and share information with them. Consider getting the member preferences for receiving information (call, email, text, other) and then building a communication plan with some of the tools below.
Communication Tools Constant Contact - https://constantcontact.com - email system that can also take polls and do marketing. This is a paid service.
Flocknote - https://flocknote.com - this tool can send email, text and make phone calls. Many parishes already have this installed, perhaps your Council can leverage the parish system?
Dial My Calls - https://www.dialmycalls.com - free and paid service that allows you to sent automated texts or record a message and have it make calls for you.
Finally, don’t overlook our existing tools: manual phone trees, Member Management and Member Billing as they each have benefits and are free and available right now.
Each Council has men who have experience with tools in this space - - if you are the Grand Knight and are not familiar with these technologies, please reach out to your members for help. We can do this and we will come out the other side stronger and with more options to include more members in Council business! .jpg) Vivat Jesus!
Fraternally,
Thomas C. Williams State Membership Director Washington State Council Membership@kofc-wa.org
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