Many public and private bodies with whom you may be dealing will require that your group is set up in a formal way. For example, organisations tend not to advance funds to groups who do not have a constitution, role holders, audited accounts, etc. Council officers will tend to ignore a group which does not have a registered membership. Formalise your group by:

The first thing many groups need is more help for their campaign - and to get more people you must first get out to tell people about the group; what you are doing and that you would like their help. You can get new volunteers by:

Your organisation is probably running on the goodwill of volunteers. Keeping volunteers on board isn't always easy, so here are tips for keeping your volunteers happy.

Set regular meeting times in advance so that people always know when they're on and can plan to participate. For the same reason, it's important to establish a regular meeting place.
Meetings are great for brainstorming ideas, feeding back information to the group about what's been happening and setting goals. They are also good for evaluating key events and activities so you can learn from successes and failures.
Establish the following roles for your meetings:

Give everyone a chance to add items to the agenda before the meeting starts. Include an updates section at the beginning of all meetings. Remember not to talk over people in meetings. Maintaining group harmony is probably the first and most important victory for any campaign.

There are many ways of keeping people informed of your activities.

Telephone trees Email Websites Newsletters

Telephone trees The phone tree relies on the commitment of each group member to make a few calls each. For an effective phone tree, a few key people need up-to-date phone lists. The way it works is one person calls,say, three people, then those three people call three people each and so on and so on. Make sure the message is short and simple and all the necessary information is there - you don't want the message to get jumbled like in a game of Chinese whispers. If you're doing a big ring around, it's worth writing the information down for the callers so they get it right. It's also important to keep an up-to-date phone list so your callers don't waste phone calls on old numbers and people who thought they'd been taken off the list.

Things to consider when starting a newsletter:

The main methods for covering newsletter production costs are:

Content depends on what you want your newsletter to achieve. Consider the following:

How successful a group is can depend upon the amount and type of publicity the group gets. Good publicity can get you support and help you achieve your goals much more easily. Too little publicity can mean more work for everybody. Bad publicity can cause problems for the group and can set back your cause. Be realistic about the type of coverage you deserve and what kind of coverage you need.

Posters, leaflets, displays and stalls, articles in the papers, speaking to other groups, small paid advertisements for smaller meetings, notices in the community notices section of the paper, campaign advertisements, radio community announcements, feature articles in papers, newsletters and journals that any interested people may read, holding events and activities to get publicity and people's attention and interest, newsletter.

It is a good idea to have a leaflet that tells people about your group and its goals. This should describe what the environmental problem is and what the group is doing and why it is important - and what people can do to help It should also include a membership form and information about how people can join the group.

Whatever you are producing always include information on the group, include a phone number for inquiries so people can contact the group.

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