e-Secretary
CCW Organization Notebook provided by the Joliet Diocesan CCW
What’s an ‘e-secretary ’ and what could she do for your council?
An e-secretary can check out various CCW websites, forward informational items, and
print out copies for members without e-mail. Since there is such a wealth of information
available online (and sometimes ONLY online), this woman would be a valuable resource
for your Council of Catholic Women. It could be a stay-at-home Mom who can go online
during children’s naptimes, a working woman who has downtime at work and is able
then to access the internet, or even a college woman looking to serve her home parish.
Her tasks would be defined by your board, but could include any or all of the following:
· Checking the NCCW website http://nccw.org semi-annually for the “Bulletin
Board”, an online newsletter of information and resources for every Commission, published
each Spring and Fall. This valuable resource is available ONLY online. She could
e-mail reminder notices to members with e-mail that the new issue was now available,
and them download and print out the issue, making copies for those members without
e-mail.
Another online-only resource from the NCCW website are monthly ‘Speed
Read’ articles. These are one or two paragraphs featuring resources for three alternating
commissions, which are made available every month that the above “Bulletin Board”
is not published. The current December issue features information for the International
Commission (a shocking report of sweatshop conditions in which crucifixes ordered
by Catholic and other churches are being made), the Legislation Commission and the
Organization Services Commission. (Partly as a result of my request the NCCW is
keeping prior issues of these articles on the website for at least several months;
besides the new December issue, the August and November issues are currently available).
Your e-secretary could similarly send reminder notices to appropriate Commission
chairs when new issues were available and print out copies for those without e-mail.
In addition to back issues of the Joliet Diocesan CCW newsletter “News
and Focus”, there is much useful information on the JD CCW website. Your e-secretary
could assist your council with planning for your council events by regularly checking
and downloading the JD CCW calendar (updated frequently) to insure that your council
includes any important events in their own calendar, and not make plans for events
that will conflict.
If you added your e-secretary’s e-address to your advertising about upcoming
events, she could also take acceptances or regrets for attending an event. If a
secretary’s e-address is going to be published for this or any other purpose, it
might be better if she set up a separate account for just such responses. Most internet
e-mail servers allow several e-mail accounts, each with their own unique e-address,
for example saccw-e-secretary@yahoo.com (meaning St. Aloysius e-secretary). That
way her personal e-mail address would continue to be private.
Your e-secretary could also lighten the load of your Corresponding Secretary;
the latter could continue to send out invitations, birthday or get well cards, meeting
notices, and other mailings to members without e-mail, with the e-secretary sending
out e-mail messages of the same items to those members who indicate that they prefer
to receive information in this manner.
The concept of an “e-secretary” is relatively new, but like everything electronic
nowadays, it is growing rapidly. Like the ‘make new friends, but keep the old’ song,
electronic communications are wonderful for these enthusiasts, but we must not forget
to keep the older – and often more personal – lines of communication open. Anyone
for handwritten letters or notes?
