DSA MEMBERS ONLY Newsletter Yahoo Group - Be sure to put your name, address and
email in the "comments to moderator" box so your
DSA membership can be verified. Viewing the
newsletter is a perk of DSA membership, so
non-members will not be approved for this group.
IS YOUR MEMBERSHIP CURRENT? CHECK HERE
5. Current Members and membership expiration dates .pdf (as of 1-31-10)
6. Understanding DSA Educational Programs
7. Dog Scout Laws
Manual: Understanding the Dog Scout Laws .pdf
8. Is my dog a Dog Scout?
9. What is a CADET SCOUT?
10. Member use of the Camp Facility
11. Cost comparison of venues Comparing what you get for your money with DSA vs. other venues
Explaination of the switch to digital and a Yahoo Group:
DSA is going digital! This means that by April of 2010, we will not be sending out a paper version of the newsletter. We will also be using the Yahoo Group for voting and occasional between newsletter updates.
WHY?
DSA membership has grown and the costs of postage, printing and paper were several thousand dollars per year.
Because of postage costs, we restricted the number of pages the printed newsletter could be, sometimes having to omit information, other times having tiny print to get more news to fit.
Delivery was not always timely. Bulk mail gets lowest priority, so there have been occasions when time sensitive information didn't get into member's hands in time.
It uses a lot of resources like paper and power to mail out the printed newsletter.
Benefits of a digital newsletter:
It can be as many pages and have as many photos as we want!
There can be "live links" to things on the internet, so you can get to it with one click instead of having to go to a computer and type in the address.
Everyone gets the notice about the newsletter at the same time through the Yahoo Group.
It saves DSA thousands of dollars per year that can be spent on educational programs instead.
We don't have to raise membership dues to cover the increasing costs of a printed newsletter.
WHY a Yahoo Group?
We looked at many different options for delivery of the digital newsletter.
Mass mailings of the newsletter file to individual email addresses has many pitfalls:
* Not all email accounts accept email with attachments
* The file size of the newsletter would again have to be limited
* Most email programs only allow about 25 recipients at a time, so emailing
300+ people 25 at a time would be very time consuming
* The bigger DSA grows, the harder this task becomes
Companies that provide mass e-mailings cost money
The Yahoo Group has many advantages:
* It's free to everyone, including DSA
* It can handle an unlimited number of members
* Membership in Yahoo is completely free- it can even be done through a library
computer, so owning a computer is not a requirement.
* It has other features such as a poll function that can be used for easy voting
that is automatically limited to DSA members only.
* The emails from the Yahoo Group can be set-up to go to ANY email address
so you don't miss the messages
* It provides an easy way for DSA to communicate important information to
every DSA member.
* You don't have to worry about a lot of "conversation" emails because only
DSA staff can post messages. The other public Yahoo Group can be
used for conversation among members.
* To get a message to every member, DSA staff only needs to send the
message once, to the private Yahoo group. Yahoo then sends it to
each member of DSA simultaneously.
* Past notices and messages from DSA staff can be read in the on-line
archives by new members or as a reference for any member.
How does it work?
As each new newsletter is posted to the DSA website's password protect page, the DSA staff will send a note through the members only Yahoo Group with that month's password and a link directly to the web page where the newsletter can be accessed. That month's password will let you access all previous DSA digital newsletters as well as the most recent one. By renewing your DSA membership each year, you will be assured of getting that monthly (or bi-monthly) password to view the newsletters on-line.
Each new member will need to apply for the Yahoo Group once their membership gets processed. A reminder to do that will be sent to them once their membership application gets processed.
So hopefully this helps you understand why we are making this switch. We truely hope you will join us in the digital age and help us save money while giving you timely and expanded news in a beautiful digital format.
Why switch?
To encourage the switch to digital, and to save money, DSA will only be doing the printed newsletter in black and white. It's also likely that the information in the newsletter will need to be abrieviated to stay within the page limit and some photos may need to be removed as well. The on-line newsletter will be the full color, full edition available to those DSA members who have a Yahoo account and have joined the private newsletter Yahoo group.
