Committtees solve an ACCESS problem
All of Audubon's digital contacts, online forms, events and event registrations, and organizer data is all kept in a single database, and accessed through the tool EveryAction. This can be unnecessarily cumbersome and even overwhelming if your concern is just one or two Audubon programs or locations. But we don't want that work and information live elsewhere, or no one would have the complete picture of our engagement with our supporters. So what to do?
The solution to this conundrum is a device in EveryAction we use called a Committee. By creating and giving you access to our digital engagement database through a Committee, we can restrict the contacts, forms, events, and email sending history to just the ones you manage and are concerned with. This makes navigating the system and reporting through it easier.
Committees solve a COMMUNICATIONS problem
A committee also gives our supporters some flexibility and choice when it comes to what emails they receive from us. Each committee has a separate subscription status for any email in our system, and should the owner of that email address unsubscribe from an email we send them, they will only be unsubscribing in that committee. This way, if someone would prefer to receive emails about Audubon's programs in their state, but not about Audubon's National and general programs (or vice versa) — they can.
How Committees Work
If you only have access to one committee, its presence will be virtually transparent.
However, if you have access to more than one, when you sign in, an additional step will appear with a chooser that looks like this:
to choose which committee you want to be working in. Once you're logged in, keep tabs of which committee you're in by looking at the top right corner of your browser window where your name is:
It's especially important to check your current committee before you upload any data, create any forms or events, or send any emails; otherwise, you might send to the wrong group of subscribers or not have the components you need to create your content.
Speaking of subscribers, one of the common ways to set up an audience for a Targeted Email (see slides 6-8 of Audubon's guide to setting up a Targeted Email for details) is to include to "All Subscribers" rather than a specific saved or search/list. Remember that the recipient counts of "All Subscribers" will differ depending on which committee you're in.