So we’re going to open this Discourse up to the world, and presumably also create a HSF “members” area where they can discuss things in private - and probably a Directors one too.
That’s great, however we also have the incoming contact@hackspace.org.uk address which currently just hits up Russ and I. I’d like to propose firing it into Helpmonks as they have a free non-profit plan https://helpmonks.com
Thing is, who mans that address? Should we just give access to Directors, or should we have a comms “team”?
Definitely agree to a comms team (how they manage things between themselves is another matter).
I’d suggest if Directors are there for legal rather than admin purposes, then they get access but aren’t actually expected to deal with responses, unless they’re part of the comms team too.
Directors should probably have directors@ for legal issues.
I may not make sense, it’s early in the morning and I’m going to let some thoughts go onto the page, here’s my initial reaction:
If you have a comms team, then that sounds like having a ‘public relations’, and then that also suggests whether or not that extends to other communications such as social media aside from e-mail, which then bleeds into marketing in general, and leads me to thoughts of who handles relationships with:
Hackspaces
Businesses / contractors (for the purpose of sponsorship, helping to get quotes for any work that needs doing)
Regulatory or legal bodies
The public
And an outlined approach of what that looks like, whether we care or turn down approaches from companies, how that’s arranged with the foundation, what would that look like in relation to individual hackspaces?
For now, for a contact@hackspace.org.uk, I would say the directors would have access and visibility on it. If it scales to the workload and inbound e-mails being too much for directors to act on then that needs a comms team to prioritise messages coming in and you have the identification of cookie cutter type replies, to raising important ones with the directors, or forwarding them to if there’s a marketing team.
A comms team of some sort sounds like a sane plan to me (HacMan are orging in teams and it sounds like its working)… As few things as possible should devolve to the Directors, they should be a last resort in general.
If we end up with a comms team, then yes, we should also define which other methods of communication they will cover, and likely other teams for other things that need doing…
