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This welcome letter is being delivered to you through your GENESIS genesis@gamaliel.net ListServ. Some of you will receive two copies of this welcome letter. One through your own e-mail address and the other because the genesis@gamaliel.org web mail is being forwarded to you at your e-mail address. Please send an e-mail to Don Burton, Gamaliel Director of Communication confirming that you received both of these e-mails.

The Genesis ListServ will enable you to keep your constituents informed electronically through newsletters and actions alerts. To use this list effectively, it is necessary to collect leader information from your affiliates membership. In order to begin collecting this information, it is recommended that every one and one be recorded by the leaders and organizers who make them on the Leader Information Card. (print on 67# cover stock and cut in half) Clicking this link will load a copy of this file in PDF format. The recorded information must be entered in your database. You will find this file in Genesis Leads /Shared documents. The editable version in MS publisher is also provided. You will find many other templates in Gamaliel Hall and in the organizer resource center. If your permissions do not let you in e-mail Don Burton.

Present day organizing in the Gamaliel network requires careful documentation of our work. This begins by documenting our newly established relationships. It is not enough to collect this data once. To become a powerful organization, contact information must be collected and updated at every affiliate meeting. We are providing an event  Sign-up Sheet in PDF and MS publish formats that you may used to document these important relationships. Again this information will not help you unless it is entered in your database.

If you have followed the Office of Communication software recommendations, you will have the capacity to edit both of these documents. You will find these two MS Publisher templates in the "shared documents" folder of Genesis Leads, your collaboration website.

The contact list in this website is an SQL database. This database is provided so that you can begin to record your contact information today. Your contact information from MS OUTLOOK can be the foundation of this list. If you record every One on One and meeting attendance in this database, it will not be long before you can paste all your e-mail addresses into your listserv. This will enable you to deliver cost effective electronic communications to your constituencies.

This data base may be used manage your Individual Donor Campaign. You may decide to use Gamaliel's for fee for service IDC offerings. In any case templates will be provided to make this data accessible in your individual donor campaign.

You need to have policies and processes for good accounting practices. At this time Gamaliel recommends QuickBooks.

For now, the most important thing is that you discipline your organization to become a data collection culture. A good list is the key to power and to money.

You now know your Gamaliel Digital Services Package includes:

• a listserv (you may have as many listservs as you need.)
• a gamaliel.org web mail account. This will be used to connect your website to e-mail forms that allow your constituents to register for you events or to request information from you. Unlimited gamaliel.net e-mail accounts are also available to those who request them.
• Paper tools to begin a data collection culture in your organization.
• A powerful SQL database to begin collecting your lists. you can modify this database and create new one. A Grant tracking database is available upon request.
• A collaboration WEB site.

When Don Burton became Gamaliel's first Director of Communication, Greg Galluzzo challenged him to make digital services so simple that they only requirement to use them was that a person could type. That is the only real requirement necessary to make your affiliate digital services package work.  Patience and a playful spirit helps! The center of your digital service package is a website.

Six years ago when we began this process, there was only one software that we could use to allow a person who did not know "html" (hyper text markup language) to create acceptable web pages. It was Microsoft FrontPage. MS FrontPage 2003 is required to edit web pages at www.gamaliel.org and the websites provided affiliates. www.gamaliel.org is a server based web. This means that your pages will be created and edited directly on our server. (This simplifies what must be installed on the user's computer.)

As our network transitions to VISTA (after faith and democracy), we will begin editing our pages with SharePoint Designer. This new software has the look and feel of FrontPage but does much more.

Those who become affiliate web masters begin their journey by taking Gamaliel Webmaster basic training. This is most often done over the phone.  This is what is necessary:

• A phone preferably one with a speaker or head phones for hands free typing.
• A computer with XP home or XP Professional operating system. XP pro is preferred.
• MS FrontPage installed. Affiliates with Office Professional 2003 installed on their computer will be able to take full advantage of their Gamaliel digital communication package.
• Text files, pictures, and graphics that tell the affiliates story.

Basic Training takes about one hour. At the end of this training, the new webmaster will be able to:

1. add content to their website template
2. edit and to basic formatting of content
3. add pictures and graphics
4. Be able to use hyperlinks to manage navigation bars that link the website pages together, connect to pages within their website, connect to other web pages on the world wide web, and to launch pre-addressed e-mails.
   create new pages and add them to the website.

This basic training allows the webmaster to begin creating e-newsletters and e-action alerts. It is recommended that the affiliate find a person who wishes to be responsible for entering data into the SQL database and who moderates the affiliates list serv. Additional training is provided.

In addition, the affiliate also receives a simple web log or blog. Many news stories are generated these days because news reporters are monitoring blogs of interest to them. The author of an affiliate blog should be a trained organizational spokes person. The role of a spokesperson and that person relationship to the affiliate media team has been outlined in An Organizer’s Guide to Media Relations, Building Powerful Media for Your Organization: A Basic Guide to Getting Noticed. (You will need to supply your username and password to a number of these links.)

If the affiliate has a person who enjoys taking digital video. Their videos can be edited using MS widows movie maker, included in XP pro and delivered by our real server.

So in addition to the items listed above, the affiliate digital package includes:

• A website with as many pages as necessary to tell the affiliates story.
• A simple Blog
• The capacity to inform the affiliate's constituency and call them to action using electronic newsletters and action alerts. This welcome letter uses this technology.
• the capacity to deliver real video through the affiliate website.

All of this is outlined in Communication Model Slice Booklet on Web Offerings.

Training and support is available through the Gamaliel Office of Communication. Contact Director Don Burton via e-mail or at 262.639.5914. If we do not answer please leave a message. If your call is not returned in 24 hours please call 262.880.1625, the number we monitor when we are traveling only.

We will look forward to seeing you in "basic training." After basic training you will receive that Communication Model "Slice Booklet" that reviews what is covered in basic training. It is important that you have content to add to your website so you will be able to put into practice what is learned in basic training.

After you have learned the basics, you will be able to use FrontPage to create more complex pages. But no matter how much you want to learn, you will have a working website for you affiliate today.

Your publicity should include information on how to access this website.

the direct link to your site is  http://www.gamaliel.org/CA/genesis

The domain name AffiliateName.org  will be purchased, if available,  for you as soon as you confirm that this is the name you want. We have been paying for the first two years. After that your organization may be billed for renewals at about $9.00 per year.

For now access to many of the components in this package are found on your contact page.

Please confirm the times for basic training.

Thank you,

Don Burton

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