4.3 Intra-Coalition Communications

Communicating to the public is a crucial element of a successful campaign, and communication within your coalition is equally important.

1. Brainstorming Sessions

In Section 2, we discussed ways to bring a broad-based group of individuals and organizations to the table and provide a comfortable environment in which to work and discuss matters before the coalition. Sharing information about the groups' activities in an organized fashion is also crucial to keeping your coalition working smoothly. Always make sure that your coalition has a prepared agenda before each meeting. Invite all coalition members to provide input on the agenda before the meeting.

2) The Action Guide

This Action Guide is available to all members of your coalition, partners, and potential partners by simply downloading it from the website at www.thoushalthonor.org. Once there, click on "Grassroots" in the index listed down the left-hand side of your screen. Although this Action Guide is designed to be a guideline for coalition building, activities, and communication, you should not feel restricted to these ideas alone. It is our hope that you will create new activities after getting ideas from this Guide. We would love to hear about your new ideas, your successes, and your not-so-successful activities so that we can share the experiences and lessons learned with others on our website. Please write us at pbscaregivers@bballard.com.

3) Email Newsletters

Collect email addresses of all members, potential partners, and media addresses. Send regular email newsletters. If you create a Yahoo! Web page, you can send email to all members of your online bulletin board system at once (see #4below). Additionally, forward the e-newsletter provided by the "And Thou Shalt Honor…" outreach team to your coalition members. Encourage each of them to forward it to their e-mail lists.

4) Online bulletin board system (BBS)

As of this writing, Yahoo! offers a free bulletin board system on the internet for anyone who wishes to set up one. The BBS is basically a web page for communication both within your coalition and within your community. This page features a section for message posting, and a section for chatting that will enable members of your coalition and community members to continually discuss caregiving issues, the PBS series, etc. To see a sample site, go to http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/caregivingexamplesite. To set up your own site, go to http://clubs.yahoo.com.

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