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Computer Communications Marlboro Jewish Center www.mjcnj.com, Weekly Email, Egroups

Over the past few years Marlboro Jewish Center ("MJC") has been attempting to stay in touch with and communicate with members more effectively. Establishing a website seemed like a great way to communicate with members and to provide information for guests and prospective members. So about 30 months ago we decided to build the first version of our website www.mjcnj.com which went live on September 20th 1998. The website was built by Josh Danziger, who was thirteen years old at the time, with adults providing content and design suggestions. The website has increased in sophistication as Josh's technical skills have grown (see an attached technical overview of the site along with sample pages).

Since it was founded, the website has attracted over 3000 visitors and over 100 congregants visit each week. They are rewarded with finding new weekly divrei torah, sneak previews of upcoming newsletters, adult education and other calendars, contact information and other "facts", a dedicated Youth area that has it's own look and feel, and pictures from recent temple events, whether it be Purim or Installation of Officers. The website has definitely increased the quantity and quality of communications in the shul. We have received dozens of requests each year from prospective members or parents interested in our nursery school; we have gotten feedback from congregants who were unhappy with an issue but never wanted to step forward with it or were unsure who to complain to; and we have gotten an occasional "nice job".

However we were still not content. Perhaps you have read about the debate over "push" vs. "pull" in terms of driving web traffic. Websites are ultimately rather passive communication vehicles. You need people to regularly visit to see what's new, and while that is possible, it is extremely challenging. As a result, in the last six months we have been collecting email addresses of congregants. We have collected over 300 valid email addresses. We maintain the addresses in a Microsoft Access database and have developed a PERL script to send the emails out (again technical details attached). We can now send out inexpensive "mailings" to congregants to increase the number of "exposures" that an event gets. This has absolutely led to better attended events. Feedback has been excellent and no one has requested to be removed from the list (sample messages attached).

We also have used the email to solicit feedback from congregants. When asked to provide comments on the High Holiday Services, more than 10% of congregants took the time to thoughtfully reply.

Finally, we used some "free web service" to increase communication within our committees. The name of the service is egroups. which has since been acquired by Yahoo (www.yahoogroups.com). A moderator sets up a group - for example the Men's Club president set up a Men's Club. The members email addresses are then added to the Men's Club group. They maintain their own email address at egroups (that way we don't have the housekeeping). Any member who sends a post to MJCmensclub@egroups.com has his mail go to the entire group (the moderator can review first if he prefers). Also events added to the egroups calendar automatically send reminders to the group at user-defined intervals (e.g. week before and day before). Egroups also lets you run a poll (e.g. please tell us if you'd rather meet this Monday or Tuesday night), post documents for reference, and more. We now use egroups for several committees, including Social Action, the Executive Board, Men's Club, and computer.

Costs. We pay $300 per year for web hosting and another $11/year for the domain name registration. The website was built by volunteers (I would guess that most shuls have teens with the time and inclination to do this). The email program was written by a volunteer and mail is served by the host of the website at no additional cost. Finally, the egroups service is free, can be maintained by someone who has little technical skill. Note that an ad appears at the beginning of each email.

Other issues. Be careful about including people's names and phone numbers on the website without their providing a release (this goes for pictures too). Although they may appear in the Temple Bulletin, some people are frightened about their names being on the website and you should be sensitive to this before you start. This goes double for teens and their parents.