Best group email for neighborhood watch

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Hi all,

A couple of years ago I created a group for our neighborhood watch organization using Windows Skydrive, added members, and was able to broadcast messages and alerts to our membership. When MS changed Skydrive to Onedrive they dropped a lot of the group functionality. Now they won’t allow the creation of any new groups and it’s becoming ever increasingly difficult to work with what is left. With all that being said, a lot of our members do not want to participate in any sort of social group, such as Facebook and so on. This limits me somewhat.

What I need is some sort of group email system where an email addressed to a single email address broadcasts the message to anyone that is subscribed. I hope this makes sense. It would be nice if this service was free since we don’t have any funds. Does anyone have any suggestions for some sort of email broadcast service?

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Not sure if a service like MailChimp would be of use to you. With less than 2000 subscribers, you can send up to 12000 emails per month, for free.

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Not sure if a service like MailChimp would be of use to you. With less than 2000 subscribers, you can send up to 12000 emails per month, for free.

Hmmm, not sure. I need the central email address be available to all our members if anyone needs to broadcast an alert. How about Google Groups? I was looking at that last night. It seems that you can add non Google email addresses without them having to sign up??? Anybody have any experience with this?

Thanks!

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You can use Outlook.com. You use “People” for contacts and groups. See Contact list management in Outlook.com for details on groups & contacts.

Joe

--Joe

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I probably didn’t accurately describe the requirements.

Joe, I understand I can create a “private” group email list using Outlook but what I need is a public email address that 40 something households can use to broadcast alerts and information to everyone that is subscribed to the list. I was able to do that prior with the MS Live Groups. That email address looked something like this; MyGroupName@Groups.Live.com. I’m not sure what Microsoft is doing with their Groups function but they won’t let you create any new groups and I’ve had some of my membership just vanish in thin air. You can say “I’m done with Microsoft’s Groups”. Anyway, I’m digressing. I’ve looked at Google groups a little closer this morning and I’m thinking that setting up an email list group with them will get the job done. I think I’ll sign up and run some tests. I’m still open for suggestions though. Thanks!

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Ok, I think I’ve resolved my own problem. I created a Google group and was able to directly add all the email addresses for my members. An automatic email was sent out to the membership advising them of their new group membership. I set their subscription type as “Email” which means they will receive every message that is posted to the group. Secondly, no one is forced to become a Google member unless they want to access some of the web features of the group. We have a “public” group email address that each member can use to broadcast a message to the other members. All the messages are logged which is good for me because occasionally I have someone ask me about something that happened a couple of years ago.

It wasn’t made clear and I’m still learning about the Google Groups feature but I understand that only 100 members can belong to a group, that is unless you want to pay a fee. The other little nuisance thing is in the member listing. Unless you have a Google email address, each name is listed by the email address and not a user name. This gets annoying when someone has a cryptic email address and you have to remember who they are. Other than that I think we’re good to go.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. 🙂

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Coming late to this thread, good choice! I am a neighbourhood watch coordinator with 45 e-mail connected members and have been using a private Google group as the communication mechanism and online archive for messages from start up 15 months ago. Works very well with a little user guidance on sensible e-mail protocol. I use a virtual user as the group owner for ease of switching to another real coordinator.

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timmscot, One of the things that I liked about OneDrive when I was using it, was that I could store pictures and other documents for access by the members that elected to have a Windows Live account. I don’t see Google Groups having that type of function. In your group management do you use any sort of online storage for access by your members?

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Have you looked at Yahoo groups. You can share pictures and documents. Any group member can send a message to the group from their listed email address without logging into Yahoo. I believe that you cannot add people who do not have Yahoo membership. Check it out. I believe that to join the group they have to have a Yahoo id, but they don’t need a Yahoo email and can list any email of their choice.

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Thanks for the response rtanenbaum. No, I didn’t look at Yahoo but I was aware that they had a groups feature. One of my criteria is that no one in my group should be forced to sign up for anything. Optionally, if they want to get a Yahoo or Google account then that’s up to them, but I don’t want to force anyone to do that. Why you might ask? I have some stubborn folks, mostly elderly, that out and out absolutely refuse to join anything out of fear for their privacy. It’s mostly what they’ve heard on the news and nothing else based on reality. So I got to deal with that mentality. I would much prefer that they participate and receive our alerts and news broadcasts vs. slamming the door shut and not participating at all. So far the Google thing is working pretty good and I’ve got everyone moved over to it. At this point, I can’t swap horses in mid-stream as they say.

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Not to take offense, but some people value their privacy more than having any need to put their life on the internet. That is based on reality. It’s not “a mentality” any different from your mentality which is to call people who value their privacy “stubborn”. I think it’s a total joke for people to be tracked by Google and Yahoo and Microsoft trying to force universal log-ins so they track everything you do. I use DuckDuckGo as my browser, too. It’s easier to remain private than try to regain lost privacy.

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Not to take offense, but some people value their privacy more than having any need to put their life on the internet. That is based on reality. It’s not “a mentality” any different from your mentality which is to call people who value their privacy “stubborn”. I think it’s a total joke for people to be tracked by Google and Yahoo and Microsoft trying to force universal log-ins so they track everything you do. I use DuckDuckGo as my browser, too. It’s easier to remain private than try to regain lost privacy.

Hit a sore spot did I? Maybe you haven’t had the opportunity to work with some elderly people who are technically challenged. Let’s see you get 40 households organized and all on the same page. It’s kind of like herding cats. I will stand by my comment of the “mentality” of what I have to work with. It’s not derogatory, nor meant to be. I am clearly expressing the mind state of certain individuals. You do have a mind state don’t you? Well there ya’ go.. we all have a mentality.

Now that you’ve cherry picked some of my comments and turned them into a social commentary, would you like to contribute to what the rest of us are talking about?

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Hit a sore spot did I? Maybe you haven’t had the opportunity to work with some elderly people who are technically challenged. Let’s see you get 40 households organized and all on the same page. It’s kind of like herding cats. I will stand by my comment of the “mentality” of what I have to work with. It’s not derogatory, nor meant to be. I am clearly expressing the mind state of certain individuals. You do have a mind state don’t you? Well there ya’ go.. we all have a mentality.

Now that you’ve cherry picked some of my comments and turned them into a social commentary, would you like to contribute to what the rest of us are talking about?

Oh Hey! Now you hit a sore spot here! I’m 76 and remember using DOS when Windows was just a twinkle in Bill’s eye! It’s not about age, or gender or anything other than interest and ability.

A note about Yahoogroups … The ones I own and manage are private. Members have to pass by me to get on the list and I screen them. One list is only by referral of people already on. Our posts are not visible outside the group and we are not listed in the general list of groups.

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I belong to three Yahoo groups — two recycling and a Sunfish group. These are public, large and without fees. I imagine they work very similar to Google Groups. I send an email to the group and all receive it based on their settings: daily summary or individual email for example. There is a database of members. The group administrator controls membership. For example in the Sunfish group Kent watches what new members want to post to see if they are spammers before allowing their messages to be posted. I think you found a very good solution.

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I also manage three Yahoo! groups and have had, mostly, satisfaction for a decade or so.

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You don’t have to have an @yahoo.com address to be in a Yahoo group, although if you do you get additional functionality. Yahoo groups can store files, such as photos and documents.

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Google Groups is a good choice. It should be noted that it depends on how its configured. I’m a member of a group that is distributed only by the Admin. Yahoo Groups I used to recommend as it was more full featured. You can share photos and files for example. However, Yahoo dumbed it down with the Neo update last year and removed several features we used. Its much more cludgy to use now. Still has more functionality than Google but for a basic email distribution, Google would be fine.

It would not be hard to post a file on Box or Dropbox, etc and share the link to the group.

It should be noted that for either group, they would not be able to access files, change settings or otherwise do things that require a login unless they had a Google or Yahoo account that is associated. But in this case, the administrator can manage it so it’s not required. I suspect a virtual account has been created for each user but would not be activated. They probably got an email invite to do so.

I’m a member of several Yahoo Groups and required a signup back in the day. That is now inherently also an email account but it wasn’t originally and I’ve never used it. Not personally a big fan of all the services integration as its been done unilaterally and to manage users.

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I’ve been using GoogleGroups for many years and have 10 or more of them. The system works fine for me. When you are doing a direct add of new members, you can add people’s names or nicknames by adding them in this format: John Doe .

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To get Google Groups to list members by name, when you do the Direct Add, enter the address like this: “last name, first name” Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to edit the member name once it’s there. So, I’ve had to delete the existing member, then re-add them.

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To get Google Groups to list members by name, when you do the Direct Add, enter the address like this: “last name, first name” Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to edit the member name once it’s there. So, I’ve had to delete the existing member, then re-add them.

Thanks for the info. I’ve researched on how to edit existing names but it sounds/looks like there’s no way to do it. I don’t think I want to reset each individual account having just got them established. Maybe I’ll let the dust settle and approach it at a later time.

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Maybe it’s too late to help, but we use Meetup.com for our Neighborhood Watch. It has not only the email listserver function, but event notification, comments on events, a bulletin board, photo section, and files section that we use. There are other functions too, but those are the ones we use, and they are dead easy to admin. It costs, but as someone who has actually hosted mail list servers on my own computer before, it’s worth the convenience. I pay for it myself, that way there aren’t any arguments about what goes on there (some people can’t help themselves, and we don’t need the wrong kind of comments showing up in the newspaper if there is ever an ‘adverse event’). People can set preferences on whether or not to get copied on every message or just announcements, too, which helps with people who don’t like ‘getting spammed’.

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Thanks NinerSevenTango. I’m keeping notes here on all these good ideas. I’m sure that in the future we will want to expand. I’ll take a look at Meetup to see what features they offer but for now I’m not going to upset the apple cart + we’re running a no-budget operation here. Hopefully that will change. Thanks again for your response.

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Another option is go to hosting for something like $20 a year (don’t know if I can mention an example, not connected to them except as a user hostignition.com)
Register a domain like nhw.com for $10 or so and host it at a host for $20 or so and use a mail list. I use that for a few clubs, One has an exec list, a members list, a social list along with a simple web site for no more than $30 a year. Unlimited emails, storage of many GB etc. Members can be moderated(emails approval required) or not.

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Another option is go to hosting for something like $20 a year (don’t know if I can mention an example, not connected to them except as a user hostignition.com)
Register a domain like nhw.com for $10 or so and host it at a host for $20 or so and use a mail list. I use that for a few clubs, One has an exec list, a members list, a social list along with a simple web site for no more than $30 a year. Unlimited emails, storage of many GB etc. Members can be moderated(emails approval required) or not.

Thanks. Perhaps in the future we could consider something like that. For now, and I’ve already said this a couple of times, we don’t have any money to work with. The other concern that I have with going too deep down the commitment trail with a domain and web site, is who will take it over when I move aside? We don’t have any other techies on the block, at least at this time. And who will assume financial responsibility? I’m thinking lightweight and free is good at least for a small volunteer organization like we have. The document and picture storage would be a nice feature but it’s not absolutely necessary. When I do something like that I’m getting back to where everybody has to sign up for the service to login and so forth. We got to take baby steps and maybe over time we will be able to technically improve our organization.

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If it’s not too late, our neighborhood uses Nextdoor.com, which as you might suspect, is a message system optimized for neighborhoods. I think it’s free (I didn’t set it up). People are happier with it than previous systems (yahoo groups, etc.).

Cedar

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