Welcoming Committee IDEAS & Suggestions
Have an ideato improve the Welcoming Committee?Let's brainstorm together!
Ideas to recruit, retain, and appreciate committee members, reach more new listeners, send cooler welcomingmessages and even welcome new listeners in new ways, etc., are all welcome! ;)
If you would prefera private opportunity to submit feedback for the committee (which may remain anonymous), you may use this feedback forminstead.
Special thanks to committee champion@Barushfor this idea and other suggestions!
Tagging recently active members ?
@apple74 @Tina123 @Roadie @michaelahelps @KendallNichole @KeepOnSmiling @mobbsy @JustOlivia @Tylerrr @Teasley4031 @HopeLeadsToTheLight @HiddenGrace @rayofhope11 @RubyRichelieu @Heltidsstuderande @emergeintolight @Kabiyesi @Breathedani @EtaAlpha @Airiana @Chaliercy @DivyaB @SurvivoringWarrior @ocdgirl @KaiaLamarr @karen38 @HelpfulUnicorn @LaurenL @Brook @HopeIsAlive @Dreamit2880 @Peacegirl @noboilpoint @laramsilva @MariahJ @sminks @Joe7cups @Simmeh @Bonn @LauraKay @Angelline @Anushka1 @Sofia @Jaelin @HannahBaxter @HannahJane @Pam @samc95xc ? whew! As always, big thanks to all of you! 
Some ideas for starters ?
? Monthly shoutout for active committee members (I can do this!)
? Perhaps we could tag listeners we've welcomed so they could 'meet their cohort,' so to speak? Or is that too much work? Might be something to test out.
? 'Request a welcome message'option/thread or general welcome postfor new listeners we'vemissed
? Reminders to note the month's Active Listening Discussion schedule, and other site events, in messages (I can do this!)
? Welcome notes to those who've joined the committee but have yet to send messages (I can do this!)
Thoughts?
General note: I know we are behind on giving out the Peppermint badges since thechange in the badge system. We are working to remedy this. Apologies, and thank youfor your patience! EDIT ?these badges are now awarded automatically.
I missed this @OliviaButler and I'm wondering how many others did. I'm bumping this before reading on with it :)
My replies to the ideas provided and another couple of ideas as well:
? Monthly shoutout for active committee members (I can do this!)
This helps keep the project in the public eye and is a public recognition of works, which is nice. An issue that I see the Welcoming Committee has is that it's not particularly in the public eye. This helps with that. We also need to do a little better with getting out and about advertising the committee a little more.
What I would say is that you make mention of the number of listeners welcomed for each of them as they are recognised. That would be a could extension, I think :)
? Perhaps we could tag listeners we've welcomed so they could 'meet their cohort,' so to speak? Or is that too much work? Might be something to test out.
Not so sure on tagging in listeners that we've welcomed to the welcoming thread. I think it should be kept purely for that purpose rather than clutter it with welcomees replying in thanks. However, if I could be so bold.. and this is just a 'brainstorm-esque' sort of a thing.. how about we tag them into a forum post that is in a section of the forum that is either more light-hearted (less favourable option) or has a consistent level of listener input (favourable option).. they'll perhaps make some initial connections with other listeners there doing that by seeing other names there and perhaps will make some connections that will link through like the Accountability Partner project-lite.. if we had a link through to other forum categories on the front page then that might be useful. Just throwing that out there.
? 'Request a welcome message'option/thread or general welcome postfor new listeners we'vemissed
How do you keep track of that? What do you put into it? One of the great things about welcoming is that it gives a first 'human' contact so if you introduce the Noni of Welcoming.. you lose that.
? Reminders to note the month's Active Listening Discussion schedule, and other site events, in messages (I can do this!)
I wasn't aware of that and hadn't included it in my message. One of the difficulties with welcome messages is getting some good stuff in there without it becoming so lengthy that people ignore it and just say "Thanks" without seeing what's in there. I include the Listener FAQ and Adventurin's New Listener Resource as my provided resources. Anyway.. back on topic..
Perhaps having some random hints and tips to improve our welcome messages would be good :)
? Welcome notes to those who've joined the committee but have yet to send messages (I can do this!)
I suggested to Pam that I would knuckle in and do this off the cuff. I didn't do this because it would be treading on toes but if you need help.. let me know.
Further Suggestions From Me
* Tidying up the Welcoming / Appreciation Committee forum category.
We need it to be as easy as possible. With my work, I have a lot of files from previous months or previous versions, and when they are superseded I save them to an 'Old folder'. Perhaps something like that could be used for Welcoming threads from previous months to eliminate some of the clutter?
I'll think of some ways of appreciating committee members later as I hadn't thought of that :)
@RoadieI haven't had as much time for this as I hoped.
Thank youfor the feedback!
1. A monthly shout out works well. I would rather emphasize the collective number of listeners welcomed by our group rather than single out how many each member welcomed. Just to keep this a quality thing and not a competitive thing, and to not intimidate potential new committee members.
2. I agree, I wouldn't want to clutter up the 'Who Did You Welcome Today'thread with further introductions. I think another post, maybe weaving into the Accountability Partner idea, could work, although it wouldn't be as streamlined. On the other hand, perhaps we should refer to the new listener introduction thread (wherever that went ?) and that should be meshed with the accountability buddy partnering ? And maybe this is a discussion for a mentor meeting. :)Before diving into this and other structural ideasfurther, I'd like to wait for the famous 'forum update' we're all looking forward to (another question for the meeting, note to self).But I think this could also weave into the 'listeners we missed' idea I had, to invite them to jump in, too,and about that?
3. No, not the "Noni of Welcoming" at all. Hmph!What I am recognizing is that we don't give all new listeners that "first 'human' contact" ? many get nothing, some spot thiscommittee and those who are bold put out a message to coresaying, 'Hey, what is this? Does everyone get a message? I didn't.' Not only was there no message or recognitionfor them at all, they feel excluded. Adding some kind of messagefor them to find saying, 'Hey! Sorry if we missed you. Just in case, here arethe new listener resources we share. Please leave a comment or send us a message if you have any questions.Thank you for being here!' ? is simply courteous,clarifying andfair, and creates an opportunity for someone otherwise missed to get a proper welcoming from one of us.
4. I'll try to set up some reminders for next month. Trickything is this hit or miss tagging you mentioned. If we ever get a group message feature, that would help!
5. You can help with this if you like! Maybe record whom you've said hello to in the members thread, so we don't hassle them too much. :) In that event, I will, too. Our newest members are highlighted in orange.
6. I wish. Ithink having all the welcoming recorded in a single thread helps. What do you think of this so far ? better, or just bigger? Regardingthe old posts, right now all I could do is rename them "OLD ?" or move them out of this category entirely because I can't create a subcategory like you would an 'old' folder. Maybe after the forum update. :\ It is useful to have the old records around, though.
Regarding Welcome Committee
@OliviaButler
1. Re: Monthly Shoutout acknowledging the collective number of listeners welcomed
I agree wholeheartedly as I think we have too many metrics that are incentivising competition rather than simple altruism. My opinion on such matters is that whether you have welcomed 1 person or 100 people doesn't matter from your own perspective, but it matters a lot from the perspective of that 1 person or 100 people you welcomed. All contributions are equally valued. I agree.
2. Perhaps we could tag listeners we've welcomed so they could 'meet their cohort,' so to speak? Or is that too much work? Might be something to test out.
I have a number of questions about how this would work. You obviously have some ideas of how it could work so that's fine by me :)
3. The Noni of Welcoming :)
My concern was not that an automated message or the like was employed but the way in which it is employed would be important. The wording is super crucial to achieve the end that you're after while also not being robotic. Your simple line of 'Hey! Sorry if we missed you. Just in case, here arethe new listener resources we share. Please leave a comment or send us a message if you have any questions.Thank you for being here!' is actually very effective and is the basis of a welcoming message that I would like to see. My concern was that it was going to be a dry, robotic message as if you were going through the tax department phone messaging system (i.e. thank you for phoning blah blah, please press 5 to go back to the start). It needs to be in keeping with what our normal messages are, you know?
5. Welcome notes to those who've joined the committee but have yet to send messages (I can do this!)
Consider it done :)
6. Tidying up the Welcome Forum Category
Having all of the welcoming in one thread makes a big difference to be honest. That's the most pragmatic approach I think :)
Thanks @OliviaButler :)
Thankyou, @Roadie ! I really appreciate your help. You know what would be awesome for issues #2 and 3? If we simply had at our disposal a listofall listeners who joined on a specific date. I understand why that wouldn't work on the dashboard (and wouldbe overwhelming for our team), but for the core committee I think it could be helpful, for our inclusiveness, if we added a reformed introduction/accountability thread. I'd guess this list exists somewhere in the site data, and if inaccessible I could figure out some way to capture the info from what we can see ?
@OliviaButler
The data definitely is somewhere. Even a monthly report of new starters within a week range could make things pretty easy for you to identify those that were missed. I guess the only concern, and this is purely hypothetical, is whether that total is sufficiently great that catching up with people in reaction to this data may be difficult with the presently active project resource.
@Roadieindeed, it may well be too difficult to be wholly inclusive. If we had the data, though, perhaps we could come up with some parameters to be a bit more inclusive. Maybe looking at those who appear to be serious about participating in 7 Cups, are starting to listen but haven't connected with the community or resources.
On the other hand, I joined as alooky-loo, intending to check out the listener-side, take the trainings for self-improvement, have a couple one-off conversations and then probably delete my account because I felt more like a memberat the time. I didn't think anyone was paying attention;it was all automated or Noni-like, I guess you could say. :) But then I gottwo friendly welcome messages from listeners, that human touch you mentioned, and? busted!? I felt like it would be rude to just bounce from this volunteer organization after being welcomed by humans like that!
I believe the new listener registrations have accelerated quite a bit since those days, though. I would watch the board we used to have, listing the total number of listeners, and it wasn't growing that much week to week. Now the site indicates6,810people have the "Newbie" badge, meaning they've been listeners for less than a month! If that's so ?
@OliviaButler
I understand your reasoning behind being wholly inclusive and agree with it wholeheartly, however if there are indeed about 6,500 to 7,000 new listeners every month then that works out to about 225 per day,
No matter which way you cut the numbers, we need more people actively welcoming new listeners. If we reactively identify those listeners who were missed, cut those numbers to get down to those who appear serious, and then actually send welcome messages out then that is going to be seriously resource hungry.
It's something to investigate however getting more people involved up front is going to be required either way.
I know that I have welcomed a number of listeners who a week later have perhaps 1 or 2 chats to their name.
@Roadieindeed, it may well be too difficult to be wholly inclusive. If we had the data, though, perhaps we could come up with some parameters to be a bit more inclusive. Maybe looking at those who appear to be serious about participating in 7 Cups, are starting to listen but haven't connected with the community or resources.
On the other hand, I joined as alooky-loo, intending to check out the listener-side, take the trainings for self-improvement, have a couple one-off conversations and then probably delete my account because I felt more like a memberat the time. I didn't think anyone was paying attention;it was all automated or Noni-like, I guess you could say. :) But then I gottwo friendly welcome messages from listeners, that human touch you mentioned, and? busted!? I felt like it would be rude to just bounce from this volunteer organization after being welcomed by humans like that!
I believe the new listener registrations have accelerated quite a bit since those days, though. I would watch the board we used to have, listing the total number of listeners, and it wasn't growing that much week to week. Now the site indicates6,810people have the "Newbie" badge, meaning they've been listeners for less than a month! If that's so ?
@Roadie we need more welcomers, I hear you. There may be no workaround. I'll think about formalizing a recruitment effort.
Perhaps the Peppermint badge no longer being committee specific could draw attention to welcoming. No commitment required to start, and maybe we can get people hooked.
Last week I talk to @Laura about winning the welcoming team challenge. She asked me how many listeners replied to my message and if I used an ice break question in my message. I was not sure how many replies I got and have never used an ice breaker question. This got me thinking. I decided to run a little experiment. I welcomed new listeners everyday last week some without an ice breaker question and some with an ice break question. There are the results:
Total listeners welcomed:144
Listeners welcomed with no question: 72
Listeners with no question who replied: 22
Listeners welcomed with ice breaker question: 72
Listeners who replied to ice breaker question: 36
Total replies: 58
