KCOT Bulletin to be electronically sent after Jan. 19 meeting

The Board of Directors of the Kiwanis Club of Tempe has determined that in order to reduce costs in the Administrative Fund -- the fund (as opposed to the Project Fund) that handles operations such as meals, awards, district and international dues and bulletin costs – the weekly KCOT Bulletin is to be converted from a mailed paper newsletter to an electronically produced and delivered communicative piece.

 

That means you won't be getting the Bulletin in the mail after mid-January, unless you are among a small handful who are not online. They will get print-outs mailed to them. An e-mail will notify members when each week's Bulletin has been posted for reading.

 

So you, my fellow Kiwanians, will now have a responsibility to be informed via the Internet. It means having an intentional habit of devoting the time to read the Bulletin online.

 

Otherwise the KCOT Bulletin does not exist for you.

 

We know so well how inundated we all are with Internet messages, not to mention Facebook posts, twitter, tweet and text messages. There is only so much a body can absorb and manage – and that's where the KCOT Bulletin runs into real trouble. You will have to change your mindset about getting information routinely about the Kiwanis Club of Tempe.

 

An electronic newsletter is a different creature.  It requires a different discipline. Some of you already get them and are charged with reading them. How much you read them is a question.

 

Like rainbows and Puccini arias, the electronic newsletter does not exist unless you deliberately take steps to pursue it and witness it.  Unless you have a laptop, you won't be able to read what Kiwanis is doing while sitting on the john or lying in bed or beside the pool.  It won't lie there on the counter for you to recheck what is for lunch at Shalimar on Thursday or who is the program.  You will need to return to the computer or your Blackberry or other electronic toys for that.

 

An electronic newsletter is not tangible, unless you print it out. An electronic newsletter does not show up as in the mail box at your house. A paper newsletter is something that has to be touched. You have to physically do something with it: Read it, or lay it aside to maybe read, or lay it aside and scan when you get a moment. Or maybe even toss immediately, along with other mail. Another person in the household might read it as well.

 

There is the potential to file the newsletter away and even keep a file of them.  A printed newsletter is not as ephemeral or transitory as an electronic newsletter that can be deleted with one keystroke before it is even opened.

 

The point is: Heretofore, the printed newsletter – the KCOT Bulletin – has been a physical fixture you have had to deal with ---even hopefully read.

 

The 11 by 14-inch, double-sided KCOT Bulletin, typically printed on ivory or golden rod paper, goes all the way back to the early 1950s.

 

With some lapses when there was no editor to produce it, the KCOT Bulletin has been the venerable tool that the Club has used across the past 60 years to provide continuity from week to week. It has been the ears for each Club meeting, grasping all the details of the gathering in words for many members who could not or did not choose to attend. For those on hand, it was an interpretation or summary of what they did and saw. It has laid out the instructions for projects. It has profiled members – new and longtime members. It has celebrated Club accomplishments and milestones, acknowledged those who turned out for fund-raisers or Interclubs. It has served to be a bridge from the alive club to the members too disengaged to attend often.

 

Down through the KCOT generations, the Bulletin has been a product and reflection of the writer/editor -- each one determining what was worth including and what to leave out.  For many years, the Club president that year was responsible for producing the newsletter each week. Sometimes that president passed on notes of a meeting to an assistant or secretary at work who typed them up and ran it off at a copy shop and delivered the Bulletins to the post office. More commonly, the Bulletin was mailed on Monday and often did not arrive before the upcoming Thursday Kiwanis meeting. (The current editor, who took over on Jan. 1, 1990, made it standard procedure to get it produced Thursday nights and folded, labeled, sorted and mailed on Friday morning for Saturday or Monday delivery).

 

KCOT member and KCOT.org webmaster Rob Kubasko is developing the template for the website to serve as a new electronic newsletter, also to be called the "KCOT Bulletin." Generally this new site will feature all the standard material contained in the Bulletin. It will be out there for others anywhere to find it and read. Perhaps, it can be a vehicle for attracting new members.

 

Currently it costs about $52.16 per week to produce the Bulletin: $21 to print, $14.50 to mail; $2.50 in ivory paper (legal size); $1 in sealing stickers;  66 cents for address labels; and $12.50 to the editor (for about 10 hours of work from note-taking through writing, formatting, printing, folding, labeling, sorting and mailing at the Tempe post office). Most of those costs will go away as we go electronic. We likely will surrender our U.S. Post Office Periodical Permit that allows mailing items for 15 cent each vs. the standard 44 cent for First Class. Getting that cost-saving permit, in the first place, was a huge hurdle for KCOT more than 35 years ago.

 

Obviously, we will have more space for photos and copy with the electronic Bulletin.  We can archive issues for retrieval. There will be an Internet permanency about it – good and bad.

 

The changeover poses a learning curve for the editor who has spent his lifetime in print media. Those of us who still like the feel, smell, ruffle of a newspaper understand that.

 

For those members we see so infrequently, we run the risk of an even weaker link to them through electronics. At this point, the Jan. 19 issue (mailed Jan. 13)  will be the last one you get on paper.

 

My hope, my call, my desire is that you, the members of the Kiwanis Club of Tempe, will transition to the Internet and take the time to read the KCOT Bulletin online.   Develop the discipline so that KCOT can continue to carry out its work and mission.

 

Lawn Griffiths, KCOT Bulletin Editor