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Iowa State Bar Association (ISBA) |
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521 East Locust
Plexus Consulting Group, LLC |
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Vital Stats: The Society for Human Resource Management's (SHRM) membership is comprised of 490+ US chapters; 165,000 + members (professionals). SHRM is the largest nonprofit organization of its kind in the world and the global voice of the Human Resource profession. Two thousand of its 145,000 members are from outside the United States. These members joined SHRM despite there not being any direct marketing or recruiting effort outside the US. The largest number of non-American members comes from Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. In all, SHRM's international membership covers 105 countries. The Challenge | The Solution | The Process | Unintended Consequences | Measurements & Results | Lessons Learned
How to connect, sort, manage, distribute and share the growing amount of legal information and knowledge for its membership? Keeping up with state and local legislative issues has always posed
a challenge for the Iowa Bar. The membership is active in 30 interest
sections, on topics ranging from corporate law to real estate to workers'
compensation. How could ISBA and its members improve the timeliness
and cost effectiveness of communication among staff, members and state
legislators to mount effective grass roots lobbying campaigns on these
issues? Moreover, how could the association reduce the volumes of
paperwork that legal communications normally entail? To implement an e-mail messaging system to collect, manage and distribute legal information quickly and cheaply. ISBA required a solution to enable its members to send information
quickly and cheaply. ISBA staff began to turn to ISBA's computer services
department for assistance, and one list-serve led to another. Before
long, the computer services department was funneling electronic communications
from staff throughout the organization to constituents with e-mail
capabilities. End users prefer the electronic format and so do ISBA
executives and staff members, particularly in view of the estimated
$50,000 - $100,000 it has saved to date on postage costs alone. To provide a rough idea of the voluminous nature of ISBA's member correspondence, the association has 21 professional interest sections comprised of 299 participating section council members. Each section generates a significant amount of documentation for the association to process and distribute on varying topics including:
In addition, ISBA maintains standing committees that cover the following areas:
Also, obtaining information updates on user groups remains a challenge.
While ISBA allows users to update their information online, many often
forego the opportunity and as a result, a significant amount of time
is spent tracking e-mails that have bounced back due to address changes.
To control the process, ISBA publishes an address update notice annually
and has placed its receptionist in charge of continually updating
member profiles in sequence for the association's contact database.
Most member feedback has been highly complimentary although there
are a few members who ask to be taken of the list because they are
unable to cope with the volume of incoming e-mails that they receive.
ISBA is careful not to blast unsolicited legislative information to
state employees, which is considered lobbying, and monitors to ensure
that all lobbying information goes exclusively to members signed up
for the lobbyist user group. ISBA's initial experience with the e-mail delivery system resulted in some amusing episodes, and the first lesson that members learned involved the difference between "Reply" and "Reply All." In the early days, ISBA sent a blast e-mail to all members requesting that they confirm receipt. When many people responded by clicking the "Reply All" icon, ISBA received numerous complaints from members whose in-boxes were flooded by the errant replies. ISBA is still educating members about the protocols and "how-tos"
behind the email system, ensuring that proper addresses are used.
Also, ISBA's information technology specialist has implemented restrictions
on who may funnel e-mail correspondence to the various user groups
and list-serves that have been established. These include the Membership
Committee, 50 other sections and committees, specialized groups and
the Corporate Council Executive Committee. Because these member lists
are so valuable, ISBA's IT group keeps them confidential to maintain
quality control and ensure that members are not unduly bombarded with
documents and messages.
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