[Ponte Alto] Recruitment

[Nicole Spaun]

Greetings,

I concur with both of the following notes, really I do.  It just seems that 
the main point is still being missed........ 'People' are concerned about 
recruitment.  'People' ask what can be done to recruit and retain new 
members.  'Someone' informs People that emails are going unanswered.  People 
then explain that Someone should keep writing because People are aware that 
there are known flaws with the Main Contact List out there yet People 
blithly leave the flaws in place.  Simply put: then People have no right to 
complain about not getting new People when People know there's a flaw in 
their system and ignore it, _expecting Someone else to deal with it_!!!

Getting on an email list is a good idea, true, but what if you don't know 
enough about the group to even know if you want to be getting their 10+ 
emails a day?  It can be very intimidating to write to a list where you 
don't know how many people may see your post when you know there is an email 
address provided for the exact person who could answer your question 
instead.

It just boggles my mind that the bulk of the responses have said, to the 
effect, Yeah WE know WE have email troubles so YOU should keep trying.  To 
get NYer for a minute, "What the $%@# is the point in having email contacts 
listed on the webpage if they don't work and you know that and don't care 
enough to fix it???  Forget about it!!!"  *NY mode off*.  Seriously, I 
promise you that newbies aren't going to keep trying when they think they've 
been dismissed already.

Think back to when you were all newbies... It takes a lot of guts for 
someone to write to people in positions of authority in a group that they 
don't know!  They did everything they should have: went to the Official 
Contact List of Officers.  Wrote to said Officers.  Waited for a response 
and got nothing.  Decided to write several more times.  Still no response!  
They did everything correct in faith and the Barony did nothing to help 
them.  If you want new members, you have to make certain that you are doing 
everything you can to welcome them.  You can't wait around for them to give 
up on getting responses to emails, decide to call instead, and then be told 
to join an email list of people who have seemingly been ignoring them.  I 
ran a college group where folks could easily go play with the neighbors and 
I can PROMISE that the bulk of the contact effort needs to be on YOUR end, 
NOT the new person's end.  To greatly paraphrase what Sabine said: you have 
to kiss their ass, not the other way around.  Otherwise they'll pack up 
their toys and play in someone else's sandbox.

The goal is to fix things to, as Lady Luce said, put an infrastructure for 
retention in place, not to blame the newbies for being shy newbies.
Ciao,
~Bianca

> > I suggest any time you feel ignored you ry again you
> > never know what is
> > happening on the other end.
> >
> > James de Biblesworth
> >
>
>Or you can always post your inquiry to this list,
>which every one reads and which, as it has been proven
>by this string of posts, will get you a very fast
>reply.
>
>Regards,
>
>Belphoebe
>