Tips on Facilitating a Social Change Email List

by Marissa King and Rich Cowan

---

The popularity of email lists within the social change community has increased enormously in recent years. Undisputedly, email lists are an important organizing tool. However, as the number of email lists has proliferated, the quality and focus of these lists has not necessarily improved along with it. There is considerable duplication of effort, and well-managed email lists take a long time to find. The combination of these factors has often caused activists to spend a lot of time in front of a computer rather than building relationships with people.

This manual was created to help address these problems. Its goal is not to encourage an increased volume of email. Rather, we want to encourage more strategic use of email, to make it more effective as an organizing tool.

Table Of Contents:

I. Introduction:
° What is an email list
° Who uses email lists and in what circumstances
° Why use an email list
° Choosing a list host
° Types of email lists

- Screened vs. Unscreened vs. Announcement lists
- Open vs. Public vs. Private lists

II. Tips for Lists that Encourage Dialog:
° What is facilitation
° Encouraging relevant discussion
° Curtailing excess verbiage
° Evening the flow of discussion

IIII. Large Scale E-Organizing (500 or more subscribers)

INTRODUCTION

-What is an Email List-

An email list is an electronic mailing list that distributes information to people who are subscribed to the list. The addresses of numerous subscribers become subsumed under one address on an email list, which make distributing information to large numbers of people easy.

-Who Establishes Email Lists and Under What Circumstances-

Social change email lists might be established by any number of members of the activist community, including:

-an individual activist who wants to communicate with similar minded activists

-an organization that wants to be able to easily communicate with its members

-a small grassroots campaign that wants to build interest on a short-term basis

Email lists work well for some organizations, but not all of them. In order for email to be a successful tool for your organization, your members must be email accessible. For instance, email lists work well for student groups, since most colleges provide email accounts and computer access to their students. However, if only 20 percent of an organization’s members are available by email, then an email list would have to be supplemented by other forms of outreach if used at all.

-Why Use an Email List-

Email lists can be used in various ways to help organizing efforts. Some of the reasons that people use email lists include, but are not limited to:

-continuing a dialog that spawned from a face-to-face meeting

-to let people know about upcoming events or actions

-to share resources related to organizing (posters, flyers, creative action ideas, etc.)

-to collaborate on upcoming events

-to discuss news or events pertinent to activism

-sharing drafts of work and documents

There are a myriad of ways that email lists can be used to advance activism. However, for any of these lists to reach their full potential, they must be administered well.

-Choosing a Host-

To administer an email list well, you must first choose an appropriate host for the list. Email lists can be hosted in two ways: an online service can be chosen to host the list or an email list can be set up on its own by installing email list software on a PC that is permanently connected to the Internet. The choice of which option is the best for you will depend on your needs and resources. Using an online service requires little or no resources other than access to a computer with Internet capability. Establishing an email list with software requires that you have a computer that can be constantly connected to the Internet, and that you also have enough computer experience to be able to deal with the technical side of setting up the computer and software. The chart below outlines some of the different hosting options that exist. The online services and hosting software fall into three categories: nonprofits that charge no fee for services, companies that do not charge a fee to host your list but include advertisements, and services that charge a fee for hosting. More information about any of the following groups is available on the web.

ONLINE SERVICES

HOSTING SOFTWARE

Online Policy Group (nonprofit)

Mailman (nonprofit/free software)

Envirolink (nonprofit)

Majordomo 1 or 2 (free)

Yahoogroups (ad-based)

Listproc (not free)

Topica (ad-based)

Listserv (not free)

Mail-List.com (fee based)

Lyris (pricey, but good)

Npogroups.org (fee based)

Sympa (free software)

Both service providers and software packages have different advantages and disadvantages. Some are free, some charge a fee, some give you greater control over your list, etc. Any good host or software will allow a facilitator to add subscribers, remove subscribers, provide facilities for subscribers to change their subscription settings, subscribe and unsubscribe themselves, and allows emails to be received in a digest or undigested mode. Additionally, some services and software packages have additional features such as list archives, calendars, multiple moderators, and shared folders. Finally, you should be aware that some hosts send undesirable and annoying ads and graphics along with messages. Choosing your host wisely will prevent problems with your list from arising later.

An alternative to either of these two options is to run your list the old-fashioned way, by manually compiling the ‘send to’ list each time you want to dispatch a message. (If you do this, BE SURE to put all the email addresses into the hidden "bcc:" or "blind carbon copy" field; otherwise your action can expose all the email addresses to unwanted mail traffic.) For a small list this may be a practical choice, but will become extremely onerous as the lists grows.

-Types of Discussion Lists-

Screened, Unscreened, and Announcement Only

When establishing your email list you will have to choose the type of list you want to create. Part of this decision involves choosing the level of message screening for your list, as well as subscription options. The details of each type of list, as well as the example of situations that each type works best in, are outlined below.

UNSCREENED/UNMODERATED:

New lists, small lists, or lists composed of individuals who know each other are generally unscreened. An unscreened list allows subscribers to post without intervention by the facilitator. Discussions on this type of list are more spontaneous than either of the other types of lists and are ideal in situations when collaboration is necessary. However, unscreened lists are susceptible to spam, subversion, and flame wars, so it is advisable that precautions be taken to prevent the list from becoming dominated by an individual, ads, or impertinent messages. One way to do this is to require that the facilitator approve each new subscription.

SCREENED/MODERATED:

A screened (or "moderated") list requires each posting to be individually approved by the facilitator. Screening is generally necessary when the volume of mail exceeds 5 messages a day. At this level of volume, mail can easily begin to fill up mailboxes of subscribers, which can be quite a nuisance, and can cause members to unsubscribe. To avoid this, you should turn on the screening option when the list reaches about 200 subscribers. However, discussion is not as spontaneous on a screened list because of the delay required to approve each message. However, when the number of subscribers exceeds 500 and people are posting frequently, doing an adequate job facilitating becomes extremely difficult, time consuming, and can be nearly impossible for one person to handle and other options for administering the list must be looked into.

ANNOUNCEMENT ONLY/ ONE-WAY LISTS:

Announcement lists are used to distribute information from a single source. Only the list owner is allowed to send mail to subscribers and subscribers can only respond to the facilitator. (Some systems allow multiple people to share ownership.) Announcement only lists can be useful when a subscription base is extremely large, making moderation impractical. One-way lists are often used by organizations that want to distribute information to members or by individuals who want to produce a news bulletin on a topic.

Public, Private, and Restricted Lists

Just as you had to choose the level of moderation you want your list to have, you must also decide how accessible you want your list to be.

PUBLIC LISTS:

Public lists are lists that you do not mind anyone on the Internet knowing about. For instance, if you choose to have your list included in the Yahoogroups list directory, the list is a public list. Public lists can either screen potential subscribers or can have an open subscription policy. Generally, the amount of screening will need to increase as the lists become more widely publicized.

PRIVATE LISTS:

Private lists or closed lists are set up to facilitate dialogue among a pre-selected group of people. Private lists tend to be unmoderated, since there is greater accountability on this type of lists, but this is not always the case.

RESTRICTED PUBLIC LISTS:

Restricted public lists are the middle-ground between public and private lists. While restricted public lists are open to the public, they involve an application process for potential members. For example, a discussion for high school Quakers is widely publicized but requires each subscriber to furnish the name of a mentor from within the community before joining.

II. TIPS FOR LISTS THAT ENCOURAGE DIALOGUE

Small to moderate sized lists tend to be either moderated or unmoderated, but are typically not announcement only lists. Regardless of whether the lists are screened, a facilitator should play an active role in discussions, trying to promote relevant discussion and ensuring that the list is not being abused. The following sections will outline what the role of a facilitator should be in a discussion and will also provide some useful advice on running a listserv.

What Is Facilitation-

Progressive groups commonly use the term "facilitate" rather than "moderate" when referring to the person who "chairs" a meeting. While software or online services often employ the term "moderator", we feel that it is important to use the word "facilitate" because it emphasizes what the role of a discussion leader should be. Facilitating is slightly different from moderating, because the facilitator is concerned with promoting good process – encouraging participation, allowing many people to participate and ensuring that the discussion remains democratic. Most of the software designed by various hosts usually attempts to apply some of the concepts of "in-person" facilitation to the Internet. This doesn't mean that facilitation online is the same as it would be in face-to-face situations; the medium is very different. However, email can be used successfully to encourage participatory dialogue and decision-making.

-The Facilitator's Responsibilities-

Facilitation is what you make of it. On active discussions, it takes about 10 minutes a day to do a minimal job, 20 minutes to do a good job, 30 minutes to do a great job. Some discussions function as occasional alerts and the time commitment may be even lower. Facilitation is a skill that takes time to perfect—the more time you put into it, the better your discussion will be.

Key responsibilities include:

1. Helping to create or revise the description used to promote your discussion and the welcome message people get when they subscribe.

2. Encouraging people to post (submit) material that is appropriate and relevant to guidelines in your welcome message -- and to be polite.

3. Cleaning the list when you get "bounces" due to bad email addresses or full mailboxes and helping users who have problems getting off the list.

4. Helping people subscribe or unsubscribe and answering any questions that pertain to that list.

5. Balancing power dynamics within the discussion-often people who work 9 to 5 computer jobs have their opinions over-represented on lists.

Facilitators are also expected to be able to check their email regularly and to plan in advance when they are going to be away for more than 4 days to have someone help them. Facilitation can be shared with someone else if you both have access to the same computer account or if you forward your email to a friend while you are away so that they can take care of responding to the requests. You should also be able to make a commitment of several months.

Most people who have been involved in group meetings can exercise pretty good judgement about what is appropriate to put out on a list. The biggest obstacles are usually dealing with the email system, not because email itself is that complicated, but because the software that operates mailing lists can sometimes be confusing. User manuals and facilitator email discussion lists exist and can help you to decipher strange messages. If you want to read up on "old-fashioned" facilitating, you could consult any of 3 books published by New Society Publishers in Philadelphia (http://www.newsociety.com).

-Encouraging Relevant Discussion-

So, how in practice do you encourage people to send material to your list that "is appropriate and relevant to the topic of the list"? At first, the challenge is to get the discussion going. When new people subscribe, a "welcome" message could ask them to introduce themselves; since people are understandably "net-shy", a little gentle prodding may be necessary to make the introductions really happen.

Asking people questions that directly pertain to the topic of your list will help your discussion stay focused. For example, if you run a creative action list and you don't explicitly encourage people to share creative action ideas, what you end up getting on your list may mirror the rest of the Internet -- activism ideas may comprise less than 5% of the content, and creative actions less than 1%. By merely asking people to report what creative actions they have organized or participated in and then asking them to say how they were able to do it, you should be able to increase the flow of information related to "orchestrating creative actions" to at least 20%.

Here are some general suggestions on how you can open up discussion:

o announce on the list and elsewhere that the list will be used for discussion of a particular issue or event that is imminent and start this discussion off with an initial message introducing the issue or event and how it affects or has inspired activism

o establish a reserve of flyers and articles in your computer, either ones you have made or ones collected from other websites or lists, that you can send to the list whenever there is a lull.

o scan other lists on the Internet, picking out relevant articles to repost, sometimes tagging on provocative questions to generate feedback

o establish a list "editorial board" of some active users who are responsible for posting interesting material to the list

o encourage people to post drafts of their work to the list for comments (poster ideas, pamphlets, or analyses of previous actions)

o give private feedback to people who have posted good stuff, encouraging more

o advertise the list to get new subscribers with a fresh perspective

o Conduct some sort of inquiry or survey requesting info on what's happening "out there". This can be as simple as saying "Do you know about any interesting actions or campaigns that are currently taking place?" (this works very well)

o send out something that is politically "incorrect" and ask if people agree with it (usually the people having problems with it will speak).

o remind people occasionally about the potential for the email communications system to build social movements

o put policies in the "welcome" file for new subscribers setting up guidelines to limit the length of messages, posted, or to prohibit the forwarding of messages, articles, etc. from other places to the discussion.

-Curtailing Excess Verbiage-

The flip side of the problem of getting a discussion going is the problem of preventing long discussions, which digress from the main purpose of the list. You may just have a problem with a few people who are unaware of proper net "etiquette" posting too often, or people posting messages that are too long. Or you may have people who are perfectly aware of "netiquette" but who wish to disrupt the discussion.

History has shown that when progressive discussions on the Internet are effective, they get attacked and subverted by ideological individuals who criticize every point and every assumption, to the extent that a constructive discussion is no longer possible. For example, on the ACTNOW-L campus activism list, there were 100 messages posted per day for a few weeks debating libertarian positions on gun control. This activity effectively forced people interested in having their mailbox free for discussions about student activism to take themselves off the ACTNOW-L mailing list. Readership fell off 70% during this period.

To help your discussion stay focused, prevent it from circulating impertinent material, and to make sure it remains a friendly environment, we suggest that you adopt certain list guidelines. These guidelines should be emailed to all new members, periodically be sent out to the list, and be kept in the list folder, if it is available. We would suggest that you consider including the following guidelines.

A message may be judged inappropriate if it is:

o not relevant to the subject of the list at hand.

o dated (no longer relevant)

o a shameless self-promotion or fund-raising gimmicks.

o a personal attack (it is O.K. to criticize someone's ideas, but not call the person stupid.)

o too long (anything over 35K should be checked to see if it needs to be that long)

o HTML mail with embedded graphics

o contains large attachments

o part of an endless back and forth argument that has grown tired

o part of too-frequent postings by the same individual (i.e. more than 7x a week) unless that person has made an extraordinary contribution

o a local event of local interest only to a non-local group

o already cross-posted to 6 other discussions

o in violation of guidelines you have established for your discussion.

Even if you are running an unmoderated list and can not prevent inappropriate messages from being posted, you can still remind people on the list about proper protocol if the list seems to be receiving too many in appropriate message. Alternatively, you can email individuals if you see that they are repeatedly violating guidelines and, in a worst case scenario, unsubscribe them from the list.

Also, the Internet tends to produce a lot of action alerts -- call this senator on this bill, fax this company about their recent atrocity, email the president about this, etc. -- that may draw people away from local activism. Moreover, repeatedly sending out action alerts that focus on an issue or constituency other than the one your list focuses on can result in your list becoming just another hodgepodge activist list that does not serve any real purpose. To help compensate for the globalizing tendency of the Internet, only post action alerts that are pertinent to your lists’ topic-either it has the same issue, constituency, or local area. By focusing on localized goals, action alerts can be much more effective. If a list is sending out ten action alerts a day notifying subscribers about another national campaign or an action that is taking place 1,500 miles away, it is unlikely that the one action alert out of 50 that is pertinent to the reader will actually get read. However, if a list focuses on a specific issue or local area, and only transmits action alerts that are relevant to that list, there is a greater probability that the action alert will be read and acted on.

When posting action alerts, it is important to follow certain protocols and to encourage members of your list to do so, as well. Phil Agre has written a short article that does a terrific job describing how to write effective action alerts. The article can be reached through the "Tech Tips" link on the Organizers’ Collaborative web page (www.organizenow.net/tech-tips) or found at http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/alerts.html.

Lastly, a danger in Internet-inspired activism (or with groups focused exclusively on lobbying) is the tendency to bounce around to whatever "fashionable" issue has won this month's competition for national or international attention. You can counteract this tendency by periodically reminding people of the importance of staying focused on outlined goals and objectives, rather than becoming caught up in discussing the latest action-of-the-month.

-Evening the Flow of Discussion-

Finding the middle ground between an excess and an insufficient number of postings can be difficult. Listed below are a few suggestions that might help you to achieve equilibrium. These tips will also make messages sent by your list more absorbable.

o Limiting postings to no more than one or two per day per person (or per week for larger lists). This forces list members to wait for commentary by others and provides an opportunity for people who are able to check their email only once a day to participate equally with those members who are online 10 hours a day.

o Set the list to default as a "digest" if your list software permits. This will cause all the messages in one day to be delivered in one large "batch" every 24 hours. The Hanford Watch list, dealing with controversies involving cleanup of radioactive waste, uses this approach. It makes the volume of 8-10 messages per day more "digestible."

o It would be useful if software were developed to automatically limit the number of postings submitted each day by an individual to an unscreened list or to require that a certain number of messages are posted between one persons multiple postings. This would make list more democratic by preventing one individual from dominating a discussion.

III. LARGE SCALE E-ORGANIZING

Email lists with 500 or more subscribers seldom work well as discussion lists. Therefore, large email lists need to be configured differently than smaller lists. Similarly, if a list is intended to be used for organizing large numbers of people, it must be designed in a special way. There are several ways to approach a list this size.

The easiest way to administer a list of this size is to run the list as an announcement only list. The announcement only list would effectively be an electronic newsletter. How frequently newsletters are sent out depends on the interest level of subscribers, the amount of information that needs to be circulated, the time sensitiveness of material and how much time the facilitator/editor can spend developing newsletters.

A second alternative, that is primarily useful for moderated discussion lists that have grown too large to be administered in the manner that they previously were, is to have multiple moderators for a single list. Some list administration software, as well as various host services, allow this feature to be turned on. Moderators can then share facilitation tasks, reducing individual time commitment and improving the quality of the list. In many cases when lists have become unmanageable because the facilitator no longer can devote the time necessary for administering the list, changing the design of the list to have multiple moderators can save the list. The Chiapas95 discussion lists have perfected this method of administration and do a fantastic job of administrating several large, multi-lingual, and overlapping lists. They achieve this by having a filter that automatically sorts messages by language and then sends the messages to specific stations where editors can choose whether or not the message is worth posting and if so to which lists. Anyone with a text-based interface can act as an editor; a web browser is not even required. The Chiapas95 team is willing to share its software and list administration designs with grassroots groups engaging in similar projects. For more information contact Harry Cleaver (hmcleave@eco.utexas.edu).

Breaking down discussions into smaller, more focused subgroups and then sending out the most pertinent mail from each discussion to all the lists is another way to deal with large scale e-organizing. This is a good solution because it creates a greater sense of community and allows stronger relationships to develop through the list. Encouraging specialized or local discussions is an important way to reduce the amount of email that activists receive and to streamline the Internet to make e-activism more effective. Smaller lists with a narrower topic will be able to generate the most effective and directed discussions with the least amount of traffic. For instance, it is more sensible and efficient for a teacher to join a discussion for fourth grade math teachers (assuming that this is their specialty), than it does for the same teacher to join a nationwide discussion for teachers.

This is not to say that large lists are not as effective as smaller lists or vice versa, each has their virtues. It is just to highlight the importance of having a list designed for a specific purpose and running your list according to your goal. If your objective is to keep as many people as possible informed about your organization work or recent events, than a large list is ideal.

-Conclusion-

By following the suggestions in this document and using common sense, you can ensure that your list will be a good one. Best of luck, and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact Organizers’ Collaborative.