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Welcome to Communicate With
Communicate With ... is a streamlined solution specifically designed to support Boards, Trusts and Parent Councils in communicating with their stakeholders, whether special interest groups, parents, families or the wider community.
Communication is one of the key responsibilities for Boards, Parent Councils and the like, however it is often one of the most challenging. There are many reasons for this, just ask your members and they will tell you why.
Whatever your communications challenge Communicate With offers a straight forward solution that supports that task. The system provides both public facing Internet capabilities and powerful Intranet capabilities that simplify and streamline the administration of committee work, providing a single location for information and correspondence on meetings, papers, consultations etc. The private Intranet area is secured and allows board members and office bearers to store and share information. For Parent Councils this can be especially helpful as draft minutes can be posted for access by members in advance of meetings, shortening the meetings themselves and streamlining information flows.
The system has been developed by a marketing and communications specialist with over 12 years experience as a member and as chairperson of Primary and Secondary School Boards and a Parent Council. So you can be assured the most common issues have been dealt with!
Whilst it is relatively straight forward for anyone to set up a website and maintain it, in practice that traditional approach tends not to work for Boards / Parent Councils and the like, as it places a significant burden on a single individual or requires members of a collaborative group to have access to the same software and tools (which in practice they seldom have). Another key issue is continuity, as life's events take over, it is seldom straight forward for the management of a site to be passed on.
Communicate With is different, it is based on a small but highly effective Content Management System, similar to those used by many large organisations. The system is pre configured to include the most common sections and pages that a Board or Parent Council is likely to require (at least to begin with).
Unlike simple web sites, Communicate With can be managed on line by any authorised individual or group and can be adapted and extended as needed with a minimum of fuss.
For most sites all that is needed to get you started is to gather up your core content - information on who you are, what you do, your meeting dates etc - you will already have this. Where the information is available in word documents, e-mails, PDFs etc it is a very simple task to update the relevant sections of your Communicate With site and to add links and key documents as needed.
Editing pages in Communicate With is as simple as typing and sending an e-mail, something most of your Board and Parent Council members will already be doing condfidently on a daily basis.
The system is preconfigured to allow users a range of facilities, access can be set based on their role, their skill or confidence level. Once users develop their skills and become more confident then they can access more advanced features of the system, allowing them to add to and develop the site to meet your groups evolving needs.
Over time you can begin modifying the structure as well as page content giving you a complete and personalised Internet and Intranet, capable of supporting your communication and administrative needs.
Please explore the basic structure and you will quickly see how you could add to your site over time. If you like it and want more information on Communicate With please follow the "Contact Us" link, on the top right of the page or click here. We will be happy to help you.
If you think there are things we have missed then let us know what additional features you would like and we will add them to our development plans for the system.
ENJOY!!