Locals today are faced with the task of trying to communicate with all of their members with little or no direction. What is the easiest way for a local to communicate, when they have no communications department, no full time person responsible for communications and little or no way of filtering all of the information to decide to send to their membership.
Today unions have more choices then ever to use when sending email. Third party applications, like Yahoo, Google Mail, AOL, and other providers of hosting email. Locals also have the ability to host what has become known as the "email address drive," this is were someone in the local union decides to try and gather every members personal email address. I have yet to see this implemented and be successful. Simply because it takes to much time and the information is usually difficult to read.
Union email has many advantages to a local union, no matter what size their membership is. Locals that have 10 members or 5, 000 members can benefit from email. Some international unions forbid locals from giving out their membership list, which in my opinion is nothing more then a lack of vision and awareness of what is really happening in communications with membership today. Unions today cannot and will not survive without better communications.
Lets look at a couple of reasons why unions don't have email for their membership. Reason number one is simple, COST. The capital cost associated with having and email system in house is cost prohibitive. Most unions cannot afford to buy the hardware and software needed to implement or maintain a full email system. Along with the cost of licenses, consumption, personal costs. Local unions that work with a provider of services allows any size union to have email for their membership. Locals and international union then can achieve a reasonable ROI and not have to concern themselves with upgrades and other maintenance costs.
Technology today is changing faster then IT departments can make up a budget for next year. Next years budget does not work anymore. Technology changes to fast and investing in thousand or even millions of dollars into technology to last for 3 to 5 years makes no sense anymore. Also, unions need to look beyond one person running their computer systems, Specializing in different areas, like LAN (Local Area Networks) systems, software, social networks, email, video and VOIP goes beyond the capabilities of one, two or even three people. Allowing a service provider to host your communication systems like email, social networks and communications will allow local unions to focus more on issues, contracts and supporting local, state and federal candidates in elected office.
Technology today is changing faster then IT departments can make up a budget for next year. Next years budget does not work anymore. Technology changes to fast and investing in thousand or even millions of dollars into technology to last for 3 to 5 years makes no sense anymore. Also, unions need to look beyond one person running their computer systems, Specializing in different areas, like LAN (Local Area Networks) systems, software, social networks, email, video and VOIP goes beyond the capabilities of one, two or even three people. Allowing a service provider to host your communication systems like email, social networks and communications will allow local unions to focus more on issues, contracts and supporting local, state and federal candidates in elected office.
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