communication department

Using Constant Contact to Communicate with Your Members

By Tricia Spayer, Chapter President

Community leaders know the importance of communicating regularly with STC members. Most information we receive comes through email communication. That's why using Constant Contact was so useful in creating email promotions, sending email newsletters, and building email lists, among other services. Read more...

Showcase Your Talents in STC: Reflections from a Leadership Day 2008 Panel

By Karen Mardahl, STC SIG Advocate

Team Conflict Is Natural

By Suzanna Laurent, Fellow, Oklahoma Chapter

Good leadership involves a responsibility to the welfare of the group. If you make choices based on popularity, you will avoid making tough decisions. You might even avoid confrontation and, as a result, deserving people may not be rewarded for their accomplishments. Sometimes leaders have to draw a line in the sand and take a stand. Read more...

Preventing Leadership Burnout

By Mary Jo Stark, Fellow, Rocky Mountain Chapter, and LCR Financial Advisor, and Jackie Damrau, Fellow, Lone Star Community, and LCR Manager

As Leadership Community Resource (LCR) volunteers, we constantly receive requests to help a community with volunteer burnout. In the worst cases, we have seen entire councils walk away from communities, one volunteer doing all four elected positions, overworked volunteers snapping at each other, and many communities run by officers who have been in the same position for years. We want to help community leaders understand volunteer burnout and provide ways to help prevent it. Read more...

Everything Counts in Large Amounts

By Dan Dornbrook, Treasurer, Chicago Chapter

Finance is not a skill set that comes easily to most technical communicators. Many of us earned our college degrees in majors (journalism in my case) that were more related to our verbal SAT scores than to our math scores. Also, those of us who aren’t in business for ourselves often rely on invisible corporate functionaries to handle all that tedious, confusing money stuff so we can focus on more important, or at least more familiar, matters.

In recent years, the leaders of the Chicago chapter realized that it needed to take control of its finances by altering its activities. Read more...

How to Put the PLAN in Planning an STC Regional Conference

By Bob Young and Stephanie Webster, Northeast Ohio Chapter Regional Conference Chairpersons

Thanks to our PLAN and hard-working volunteers, STC’s Northeast Ohio community held a successful regional conference titled “The Crucial Communicator” on October 11 and 12, 2007, in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The conference drew a capacity crowd of 111 attendees and netted our community a considerable profit. If your community is considering hosting a regional conference, here are some suggestions for planning from the Northeast Ohio community. Read more...

Lead Volunteers to Superstardom

By Mel Haughton, Immediate Past President, Lone Star Community

When I took over as Lone Star Community (LSC) president for the 2006–07 program year, I had a very clear goal in mind. I wanted to start a program that recognized our volunteers for the hard work they put in throughout the year. We already had a recognition award—the “You Rock” Award—which is a certificate that we give to a few members every year in recognition of their hard work. But the “You Rock” Award didn’t necessarily create a sense of teamwork and superstardom. We were missing something. Read more...

Podcasting Speaker Programs for STC Communities

By Joseph M. Humbert, Treasurer, Webweaver, and Immediate Past President, East Bay Chapter