The main thread (no pun intended) that holds together many online groups is some form of a discussions feature. Groups need a dedicated space for their members to participate in online private discussion threads. But, I’ve had people ask me before why a group needs to use the Discussions feature in MemberHub. “Why not just use your regular email?”, they ask. Here are 5 points to consider:

1. Not Everyone has Everyone’s Email Address

How many times have you ever wanted to email a group of folks, but soon realize you don’t have everyone’s email address? So what do you do? You go digging through your inbox looking for the last email that someone sent out to everyone in the list, so that you can reply. If your new message has a different subject, you tweak the subject in the new new mail message and then delete all the text from the thread.  Does this sound familiar? Heck, sometimes you want to email everyone in a group and you can’t remember someone’s name. That’s never happened to me…   If all the members are grouped together in a hub, all you have to do is remember ONE email address. Every Hub in MemberHub has a private, email address and whenever a member needs to reach the group, all they have to do is send an email to the Hub to reach everyone in the hub!

2. You Can’t Change History

Do you keep emails around, in you inbox for a long time because they are important for one reason or another? I am bad about this. I’ll leave a message in my inbox because I need to come back to it or it’s significant. But after using MemberHub for our business (yes, we “eat our own dog food”), I’ve found that I have less anxiety about removing messages from my local mail client.  I know that the history of these discussions are “in the cloud”, within the hub. Cool.

3. Opt In; Opt Out (Customize Your Notifications)

Have you ever wished that people would just forget about the Reply All button? Some discussion thread gets going through email and you’re just not that interested; meanwhile you’ve got 15 new emails in the last 10 minutes. Well, if the discussion is taking place in a mailing list then you can opt out of discussions for the time being and come back to the Hub to read about it later. Remember from the last point – you can always access the Hub and view past discussions.

4. Recognizing the Communication Channel Will Encourage Participation

Communication is key to the success of any organization! The more you can get your members, staff and volunteers actively communicating, you stand a much better chance of reaching your goals. By making it easier for folks to communicate, you increase your organization’s chances of success. Recognizing the communication channel and encouraging its use can help improve real communication.

5. Centralize Discussions With Multiple Groups

One of the greatest strengths of MemberHub is its ability to aggregate all the groups in your life. So as a member of Hubs at your church, Hubs at your non-profit and Hubs at your sports league, you can move in and out of organized discussions with the people in each Hub.  Now, the 4 benefits above apply to each online group in your life!

There’s much to say about “online community” these days. Multiple resources are available to learn how to create online community and there are an exorbitant list of tools at your disposal to create one. Millions of people are connecting through Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. But I insist that community; the real thing, is built outside of technology. I agree with John Saddington that using technology does not prove that you have community. In fact, I would even suggest, as many have done before me, that community should build relationships and relationships should change lives. Social networking should ultimately lead to a real in-person uniting where people can actually meet each other. I’m pretty sure Chris Brogan has suggested something like this before.

And for those groups of people that are already in “community”, I would suggest that you don’t need software to “build” community. You need software to enhance your community. For example, it has been proven that Facebook enhances face time. This makes sense, because you’re able to keep track of the day-to-day lives of your friends, and then touch on those important points when you meet in person. The small-talk can be cut out and friends can get to the “meat” of a conversation.

In a similar manner, groups, teams, ministries, volunteers and people involved in member-driven organizations need software to help them with the day-to-day logistics, planning and coordination of their groups. Many times you don’t need to build community online as much as you just need to take care of the business of being a part of a community. When everyone is informed, up-to-date and accessible then the community can grow stronger. When you can take care of the business of being a member online, you can leave time for real community when you’re together in person. In other words, you won’t have to worry about passing out schedules and documents,exchanging notes, reminding people of events and general planning during real community; you can enjoy each other.

When members are face-to-face is when they can really focus on their relationships; which builds community; the real thing. Do you agree?

Are your groups organized? What are your ministries, small groups and other teams in your church using to handle the logistics, planning and coordination that makes each group tick? What about  your volunteers? Does your group communications remind you of this closet?

For many groups, it’s like this:

• One person maintains an email list (likely an email group in their mail client)
• Other members must dig for an old email to find the entire list to start a new thread
• People are keeping an array of emails locally that contain important information
• Each person has an outdated version of an important document
• Each person is responsible for remembering events and keeping their calendar
• Some people miss events
• One person remembers to send everyone reminders to events

Here’s what it can be like for those groups:

• Each person can send a message to the entire group, quickly and easily
• No one has to maintain that list, all the members are always in it
• All discussions that take place in the group are preserved
• A file repository contains the latest version of shared documents
• As people add calendar events everyone is notified via email
• Members are automatically reminded of events with emails and text messaging
• Members can be reached instantly with text messaging to cell phones

Ah…each compartment (group), organized and all in the same place. Eureka!

Does this sound nice? Do your groups have this now? What are you using? Will you try MemberHub and let us know what you think? If you’re using MemberHub now, will you share you feedback with us?

If you are a non-profit organization and not following Rebecca Leaman on Wild Apricot’s blog, do yourself a favor and start. It’s an excellent resource and chocked full of relevant information, tips, and insightful conversations that all non-profits can benefit from.

This past weekend I was enjoying her post; Facebook Profiles and Pages and Groups, oh my! This post was very timely for me because I finally created my Facebook profile after coming to terms with the reality that if I’m going to embrace social media on every level, it is simply necessary to have a presence there. 

Rebecca’s post is a great explanation of not only the differences between Facebook profiles, pages and groups, but also suggests appropriate uses for each and covers exactly what the folks at Facebook say about them. At the end of her post was when I got really excited. Here’s an excerpt from the last 2 paragraphs of the post.

Embrace the features of Facebook for what they are and what they can do, but ake [sic] your website the hub of your online community. It’s there, on your own turf, where you can encourage a higher level of engagement, subscriptions to your blog or email newsletter, active membership in your organization, conversions to offline actions, and the true two-way communication that leads to more lasting 

If you’re familiar at all with MemberHub, you’ll know why this excited me. She’s proving one of our biggest points. And that is this: the members, constituents and volunteer’s of your organization need a platform that centralizes staff and community members to seamlessly handle the logistics, administration, communication and coordination that often drains time, energy and money from all involved parties. Facebook is social networking. It’s a “networking” tool that can be effective at spreading your organization’s reach and better your cause. However, once someone is an active, participating member of any 3rd party organization, they need another tool that will immediately connect them with the organization so they can conduct the “business of being a member”.

Organizations can signup with MemberHub and in minutes have a “hub of [for] your online community” for each volunteer group, ministry, team and/or small group. Hubs are private and secure; you have to be personally invited or have a hub key to join one. With MemberHub, you can immediately encourage your members to participate in conversations, share files and calendars and generally stay connected with instant notifications and automatic event reminders. Leave your website alone for now and create a private online community for your members in MemberHub TODAY!

• Clarity 
• Color
• Cut
• Caret
• Cost

• Communication
• Collaboration
• Coordination
• Centralization

The famous Irish playwright and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature Edward Bernard Shaw once said that “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Think about how pervasive this comment is. It can be applied to organizations with 2000 members and it’s true all the way down to 2 people. Perhaps the single most obvious example is marriage. A marriage is doomed to fail if the couple does not effectively communicate. The goals and aspirations of organizations whether large or small will fail unless effective communication has taken place. 

The bigger the project or organization, the more critical communication becomes. The Tower of Babel failed because the builders were caused to speak different languages which ultimately led to a failure in communication. Simply destroy the communication lifeline of any organization of people and their common goals and purposes will be thwarted. 

In a business, management must share the direction and vision for the company to the employees. And the employees must have a way to share their thoughts and be encouraged to ask questions, give feedback and generally feel connected with the overall purpose of the company.

When churches, schools, clubs, associations and organizations have two-way communications between the organization and it’s members the level member satisfaction is increased and the members ultimately feel more connected.

What happens when 2 people fail to communicate? What happens to an organization when organizational communications are not properly addressed? Why is communication constantly identified as a chief complaint among members of thousands of organizations? How do we use technology and sort through what actually enhances communication and what hinders it?

Communication is important on a personal level. It’s likely that my friends will chuckle when they find out I’m blogging about communications. After all, I often fail to return phone calls or initiate conversation with my closet companions. And don’t let my wife begin to tell you how well I’ve been known to listen.

Like a-bazillion others, around the world, I want to share my experience with Twitter. I’m really impressed with its usefulness thus far. I think it has far-reaching implications for all types of people, organizations, causes and relationships. New benefits are being revealed every day and they can be realized by churches, non-profits and all types of organizations! I haven’t really started my Twitter usage in earnest yet. I have 46 followers…whoop-de-do (I don’t know how to spell that). I have a feeling that the growth of MemberHub has much to do with how well we’re able to embrace internet marketing, social media and in particular Twitter. I want to share with others my experience along the way with Twitter so that others can see just what it’s able to do for MemberHub.

Here at MemberHub we are just now learning how to use social media and are ramping up our internet marketing campaign. Frank Reed, an SMB social media guru, has encouraged us to use all the social media marketing weapons available. Millee and I have both started to follow people on Twitter and take advantage of the “after-market” tools availble to really make Twitter work for you. We want to follow, learn from and ultimately contribute to the church technology and non-profits industry. Particularly, how can churches, small-groups, and assoications benefit from using technology to centralize, organize and unite staff AND members.

So…using Twollo, Millee is now following 353 people as of today at 3:00pm EST. Just yesterday, she started following a Christian Educator in Texas who has many connections to pastors and the faith-based community. Well he saw that Millee was following him on Twitter. For those of you who don’t know, when someone begins to follow you on Twitter, you get an e-mail notification with a link to the follower’s profile. This gentleman helps pastors implement a discipleship process that embraces the importance of small-groups within the church. Well upon viewing Millee’s profile in Twitter he learned that she was on the MemberHub team and went to our website. He then noticed our emphasis on connecting multiple small-groups and providing membership managment and decided that he’d contact us. 

Millee and I called him and there really appears to be a great opportunity for us to partner and provide value-added service for our clients. It was so encouraging and the opportunity to help this fellow and the pastors that he consults with is really exciting! I’ll let you know how it goes.

I am also impressed today by a Church Technology Evangelist by the name of Anthony Coppedge. I started following Anthony a few days ago because of our similar interest in technology and churches. Today he posted a tweet (a message in Twitter) to all his followers saying that he needed to do some brainstorming.

Then a few minutes later Anthody posted another tweet providing a link to a live audio and video chat room using TokBox.com. Unfortunately I missed the chat, but in less than 15 minutes he was able to announce and begin a real live chat with people that share similar interests and concerns over the church technology industry and brainstorm with colleagues that he’s never met (presumably). That is REAL cool! I’m going to sit in on the next one and try to learn from him and others in this space. Maybe I’ll even be able to contribute. Anthony is about to launch an E-Book titled “The Reason Your Church Must Use Twitter”.

I’m looking forward to that book and have begun to formulate thoughts on how church pastors in particular really need to use Twitter.

Do you know anyone that doesn’t have a cell phone? If I have a friend or colleague that doesn’t currently own a cell phone then I am unaware of it. I wasn’t even surprised to learn my pre-teen nieces and nephews have cell phones. What did we do before we all had cell phones? Obviously we weren’t able to talk instantly. Now this isn’t going to be one of those…”we live in a fast-paced, connected world where everyone wants data and information and they expect to receive it now…” talks. But stop and think about it.

The members of your organization are parents, friends and students, and they want to be instantly notified of important information pertaining to them or their family members. They want to know as soon as their son’s soccer practice is cancelled and conveniently reminded of important upcoming events. In general, we all want information as soon as feasibly possible. We’re even interested in getting periodic updates throughout the day from our friends, family and co-workers in order to share what we are doing, RIGHT NOW with each other. If it’s not obvious that the last comment was directed at the increasing social media craze, just ask one of the millions of Americans that use Facebook and/or Twitter.

One of the most effective mediums for short, instant notifications is the text message, or SMS message. Text messaging functionality is available in MemberHub to help administrators and members send and receive timely, important information. We’re all on the go and we all have cell phones in order to attain immediate communication. 

Within any hub, announcements can be created and marked urgent. By default a member’s hub settings allow urgent announcements to be sent via text message. Keep in mind that your members have to provide their mobile phone number, select their Provider and opt-in to receive text messages on their profile (http://memberhub.com/profile). Hub administrators can choose to keep the creation of hub announcements as an admin privilege, or they can choose to allow all members in their hub to create announcements. This option can be found on the Permissions tab under the Hub Settings button in your hub. If you have a MemberHub Organization, you can even choose to broadcast an announcement to multiple hubs. For example, you may be a church that has 40 hubs for all the groups in your church, but maybe you just need to reach the small-group bible study hubs. There are an endless combination of multiple hub scenarios and ways to reach them.

Use hub announcements as a one-way message to instantly reach your members on their cell phones next time you have a canceled meeting, practice or urgent announcement of any kind. I even know a user who sends hub announcements to her camp staff (all college students) just to encourage them and thank them!

Another very convenient place where text messages can be used is for events created on a hub calendar. Whenever you create a new event on a hub calendar you can choose to automatically remind members of the event by sending them a text message to their cell phone before the event starts. What this means is that you can put events on your group’s calendar for say, an entire month, and then relax and let MemberHub send out e-mails AND text messages to your members to remind them on the upcoming events. How much time will that save you?

Undoubtedly, more and more people are using text messaging and it’s becoming a preferred method of communication. You need to make sure your organization can take advantage and reach your members instantly.

One of the main reasons why I am passionate about building a solution to help organizations and their members communicate is because they need it. It seems everywhere I go organizations tell me that their members or participants top concern is “communication”. Now using the word “communication” in this context is rather generic. Are organization administrators doing an unsatisfactory job of commnicating to their members? Are the members and participants not communicating with each other? Maybe a little bit of both.

Just the other day we were at an orientation for my daughter’s pre-school. The school director’s first comment was acknowledgement to the parents that they need to improve communication between the school, the teachers and the parents. Not very comforting, but still very understandable. For the teachers I assume it just means that they have to check e-mail and get on the phone more. Which they did, to their defense. We just had a phone “review” on how my daughter is doing, and it was great! We asked a lot of questions and it is awesome hearing about what our daughter does and she acts around other children when we’re not there. I wanted more.

How can the teachers and the parents really open up communication channels where both parties are learning and sharing ideas? Is there a way where I, as a busy father, could learn more about what my child is doing while she’s in school? If other parents were talking with the teachers and learning from them how to teach children would it encourage me to be more involved in my child’s life? 

Can the use of online communication and collaboration tools create thriving real-world communities where the exchange of ideas, knowledge and information enhances the day-to-day lives of members and member-driven organizations?

What do you think?

We’re all so busy! Our families are always on the move. We’re affiliated with clubs, associations, churches, sports leagues and non-profit organizations. And our kids are busy too. They go to schools and are involved in extra curricular activities at school, play in various youth sports leagues, go to camp and are boy scouts and girl scouts.

Imagine if all the organizations that you’re affiliated with used a website in such a way that you could login to this website and ultimately see a combined calendar of all your families events? As your organizations put events on their calendars you see them on your calendar. All the practices, games, banquets. All the meetings, services and schedules in one place. Imagine if the organization could instantly communicate with all the members via email and text messaging. And what if you could also use this website to communicate to folks at the organization and even the other members. This is the vision we have for MemberHub.

MemberHub is a self-service membership management and collaboration tool for organizations and their members. We will be using this blog to give updates on MemberHub’s development progress, new features, and general announcements. Additionally, this blog will discuss issues related to the membership management needs of organizations and anything related to needs of the members.

We are currently in a private beta and will move into a public beta by the end of September.

Much, much more to come…