Surrey Association MemberMojo example rather than the emails which say ‘I’ve been told to forward this to our members’ from a Secretary role with no active knowledge or involvement in the content shared. — Lucy Chandhial
I too dislike those messages, especially if they include lots of administrative padding before you get to the meat, but there are pros and cons. if everything goes to everyone then either they automatically get binned, or worse people opt out of being on the list. In a multi level organisation some messages need to go from top to bottom but not all do.
In out Branch we have several different lists - officers, tower correspondents and members (and some towers have their own members lists). Some of what comes from the Guild (or the CC) is of relevance to officers and some to members so the secretary passes it on accordingly. Likewise some of what she sends is of interest to individual members and some to those managing towers.
When ODG set up a communications working group (in 2006) one of the principles it established was that the best people to judge what to pass on where, and what to act in without passing on, we're those with local knowledge. They are best able to strike the balance to keep everyone informed (and interested) without overloading them or turning them off.
The counter argument is the secretary who passes nothing on, the answer to people who don't do their job is not to be found in technological overkill.
One of the attractive features of integrated mailing lists (as provided by systems like LoveAdmin, MemberMojo, etc) is that it is possible to have more specialised lists, with members opting in or out themselves. That's quite good for things like practice notices,where there is limited overlap between those who attend advanced practices and elementary ones, but less good for other things where there aren't such obvious divisions.