Dear Members,
As a club always looking to improve the way that we operate, one of the things we have identified as a committee is that using email as our primary mode of communication with our members is not the most effective way to engage with you all in today’s technological era.
Having consulted with other similar organisations and with a number of informal groups already set up across the club, we have decided that moving forward we will be using WhatsApp as our primary way to communicate with our members. Most of us now use WhatsApp as the primary source of communication and so we have established a “Wanstead and Snaresbrook CC Community Page” on WhatsApp. Please see below explanation of how this will work:
Wanstead & Snaresbrook CC Whatsapp Community
The “Communities” section of WhatsApp is present on the homepage of the app at the bottom centre of the screen, inbetween the calls and messages symbols. When joining our newly created Community Page, once accepted as a member all members are automatically added to the “Announcements” page which is where the majority of our communication will now come from. This will be an admin only run page by a few members of the committee and all other members will not be able to post messages or comment and importantly their name, number and profile picture will not be available to any other general members of the group. The Announcements page will likely see a couple of messages a week at the most - related to important club topics such as any urgent Friday night training updates, social events, club issues etc.
In addition to this main Announcements page, there will be several standard WhatsApp groups underneath our Community page for our members to request to join voluntarily as well as a number of private only groups for certain members/areas of the club. These groups will operate like standard WhatsApp groups where members can interact and their WhatsApp profile details (name, phone number and picture) will be available to other members of that group. The groups will only be available for over 18s to join and emails sent to members will be on a limited basis going forward.
To make this work and improve communications across the club we need as many members as possible to join the community (and help us to encourage other members to do so as well). You can request to join our whatsapp community below and we would encourage you to share this link to other club members to join voluntarily.
JOIN WHATSAPP GROUP
For those members already in official Wanstead CC affiliated club groups we will be adding these groups to the Community which will automatically make members of those groups part of the Community and important Announcements page. It would be great if you could accept this invite when it is received and look at some of our other open groups such as the social committee, volunteers group, gardens group and occasional playing members – we need some help! Again – please circulate the invite to other club members who can then opt in to join the community.
Thanks, your Committee
*You should be aware that:
- If you join a group other than the main “Announcements” page then as with any other WhatsApp group, everyone in the group will be able to see your name, mobile number and profile picture
- You can leave any group whenever you would like just by choosing to leave the group or community
- The clubs GDPR and WhatsApp policy can be viewed here
- All members whose details we hold for the purposes of club communications will be receiving an invite to the Community over the coming weeks
- All members currently affiliated with official pre-existing Wanstead CC groups will be automatically added to the new Community.
Thanks,
Your Committee