Club Bulletin

A club bulletin is an important tool to keep your members informed of club news, events, speakers, and everything else. As a bulletin editor, you will need to know how to create and send a personalized bulletin instantly to all members (and their friends) via email. For those members who don't have email, you then open up a non-personalized version and print several copies to bring to your club meeting.

Introduction: Club Bulletin 101

The club bulletin is a very important communication tool for the club as it does several things:

·  Allow members who missed the last meeting to know what happened

·  Disseminate information and news to members

·  Remind each member of their commitments (volunteer work, duty roster, etc.)

If you are reading this, you are probably the member assigned to be the club's Bulletin Editor. The majority of the work involved in being the Bulletin Editor lies in acquiring all the content of the weekly bulletin. Don't underestimate the effort involved in gathering information, and composing articles. Ask club members to help in preparing stories and articles, because as the Bulletin Editor, you already have enough to do with preparing the bulletin itself!
Remind members to keep you abreast of all upcoming speakers and events as they come up, so you avoid chasing people for information. Consider adding a recurring article at the bottom of each week's bulletin calling for information, stories, news, etc, to forward to you. Remind members that they can easily contact you by clicking on the email link that appears on the top left of each bulletin. That link will automatically open a new email message to be sent to your address.

Define a Bulletin Editor

Your club must have a designated Bulletin Editor defined before you can start preparing and sending eBulletins to members. A club executive (President, Vice-President, etc.) is the only member with the right to assign a Bulletin Editor.

·  Login and go to the Admin page.

·  Under For Administrators, click on Edit Club Info & Settings.

·  Next to the label Bulletin Editor, select the appropriate member name from the drop down list.

·  Click on Save.

Managing Bulletin Content
Managing bulletin content is nothing more than adding, editing, and deleting content from the bulletin. This is all done within the friendly framework of ClubRunner, so you do not need technical or design skills to create an impressive electronic bulletin and send it to all members. You don’t even need to keep track of everyone’s email addresses, since ClubRunner takes care of that for you.
However, there is one thing you can familiarize yourself with to vastly improve the look of your content. Knowing the basics of formatting allows you to bold, italicize, add bullets and numbering to your articles to make the bulletin easier to read and add visual interest.

Import stories from the homepage to your bulletin

Often, you want your bulletin to contain some of the stories that have been already added to the homepage. For example, another member has added a nice story about your club's successful fundraising dinner to the homepage. You'd like to draw attention to the story by adding it to the bulletin.
This is useful if not all members are in the habit of visiting the club website, and critical for members without internet access so that they can read the story in the printed version of the bulletin you would hand them next meeting. Rather than entering the story again in your bulletin manager page, simply link the story to the bulletin.

·  In the Website Manager section, click on Edit Stories.

·  Locate the story in the list shown, and click on Edit for that story.

·  At the end of the page, you will see a question asking Show In Bulletin?.

·  Indicate a Yes by selecting the Yes option.

·  Click on the Save button to update.

Add an article to the bulletin

· Login and then click on the admin tab on the top of the screen.

· Under Club eBulletin section, click on Edit Bulletin Contents.

· Click on Add New Content and fill in the information pertaining to the new article on the new screen that opens up.

· Click on Save to make sure that your changes are updated and saved.
Note: If you have not finished your story yet and wish to save it (hidden) for a later time, make sure you hide it by selecting the "Don't Show It In Bulletin" option.

Edit a bulletin article

·  Login then click on the admin tab on the top of the screen.

·  Under Club eBulletin section, click on Edit Bulletin Contents.

·  You will see a list of all the articles appearing on the bulletin. Below that is a list of homepage stories that you have chosen to be imported into the bulletin.

·  Click on the edit option next to the article you want to make changes to.

·  Make the necessary changes to the article on the new screen that opens

·  Click on the Save button to save your work.


Note: You can only edit/delete/add bulletin-specific stories from here. If you choose not to have an imported story in the bulletin, edit the story (see Import stories from the homepage to your bulletin).

Delete a bulletin article

·  Login then click on the Admin tab on the top of the screen.

·  Under Club eBulletin, click on Edit Bulletin Contents.

·  Locate the article, and click on the Delete option.


Warning! Once you Delete a bulletin article, it is gone forever and is irretrievable. If you have any doubts about deleting, it's better to hide the article. It will disappear from the bulletin, but will remain in the list of articles in case you need it later.

Hiding some bulletin content

Sometimes adding content to the bulletin is something that you would work on over several sessions. You might be authoring an article, or waiting to verify some names or dates. In that case, you want to be able to add the story to the list, but don't want the story appearing in the next bulletin. This is also useful if an article is no longer needed, but you are not quite ready to delete it yet.

·  Under Club eBulletin section, click on Edit Bulletin Contents.

·  Locate the bulletin article you wish to hide, and click on Edit.


·  At the end of the page, there is a question asking you whether to Show In Bulletin.

·  Select Don't Show It In Bulletin to hide the story.

·  Click on Save to save your work.

Managing the Order of Bulletin Contents

As the Bulletin Editor, you have complete control over the order of the bulletin stories you add. A sequence number can be specified by you for each bulletin article. The numbers do not have to be consecutive (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4.) nor do they need to start with 1. The bulletin starts with the smallest number, and orders subsequent articles in ascending order (eg. 2, 6, 11, 12, 15, 30). This makes life a lot easier as you constantly add and delete articles for the Bulletin.

·  Under Club eBulletin section, click on Edit Bulletin Contents.

·  Locate the bulletin article you wish to hide, and click on Edit.

·  Inside the first field, labelled Seq No, type in the number

·  Click Save to finish

Tip: When you start, assign sequence numbers of 10, 20, 30, etc. When you later wish to insert a new article between No. 10 and No. 20 simply assign the new article a sequence number of 11.
Note: The portion of the Bulletin that is imported from the Stories of the home page can also be moved around. To do this, click on the Change Seq link next to each story in the Bulletin page.

Sending The Bulletin

Distribute the bulletin to all members Once you are happy with all the articles appearing in your bulletin, you can send it immediately to all members who have an email address.

· Under the Club eBulletin section, click on Email Bulletin to Members and/or Friends.


Note: To the left of the Email Bulletin to Members and/or Friends link, you can see the date and time the last bulletin was sent.

· You will go to a new screen. On that page, you will be able to decide whether to send the bulletin to all members, all friends, all other users, or specific groups of other users.

· Type in the date of the bulletin. Today's date is already typed in as a default.

· Click on Send to finish.

Members Without Email
For those members without email or internet access, you will need to print up a non-personalized bulletin to distribute (most likely at the next club meeting).
· In the eBulletin section, click on View Club Bulletin
· The ebulletin will open in a new window.
· To print, click on File, then Print...

View my personalized ebulletin

There are a couple of reasons why you would want to view your eBulletin even though it is sent to your email by the Bulletin Editor:

· You deleted it, but now wish to read it.

· You don't have an email address, but have Internet access.

· Login as usual and then go to the Admin tab.

· Under the heading My ClubRunner, click on the View My Bulletin link.

· If you wish to print, click on File, then Print...

Bulletin Personalization
The club bulletin goes beyond mere reporting. It is a personalized reminder sent to each and every member and contains the member's commitments and outstanding duties related to club meetings, events, new member programs and more.
Each member receives the following in their bulletin:

·  Duty roster (meeting responsibility)

·  Event date and time for which the member is booked

·  Volunteering date and time for which the member is booked

·  Tasks related to new members that are still outstanding

Page 1 of 5 6/12/2008