How to host successful conference calls for your group

Telephone conference calls are extremely helpful in moving ahead with your organizational work for the April 15 Tax Day Tea Parties.

This tells you how to:

• Find conference call companies that provide you with free teleconference services.
• Make the “public or private?” decision.
• Let others know about any calls you have scheduled.
• Plan for a successful conference call.

Free conference call services

I recommend the Reservationless conference service provided by Free Conference. You’ll have to register and once you do, you’ll get a a dedicated dial-in number and access code.

Once you have the dedicated dial-in number and access code, you’re all set.

You can now move to the next step, which is inviting people to join the call.

Public or private?

A basic decision you have to make is whether you want to make the time of your call, and the dial-in number/access code public. By “public”, I mean putting that information on the page for your state or on your group’s Facebook page, or any other websites you can use for communication purposes.

The benefit of making your call-in information public is that by doing so you broaden your reach, because if you don’t make it public, the only people who can join your call are the people you directly invite to be on the call.

The disadvantage of making your call-in information public is you leave yourself open to people joining the call who are opposed to what you are doing.

It’s a judgment call.

Inviting people to join the call

When you invite people to join the call, make sure that when you contact them, you include all the relevant information about the call.  That includes:

• Time of the call.
• Dial-in number.
• Access code.
• Your contact information.
• Brief description of the purpose of the call (”This is a call to organize our Tax Day Tea Protest”).
• An estimate of how long the call will last.

If you don’t include that information at first, you’re creating a lot of extra work for yourself because people will start bombarding you with those questions and you’ll have to send out many more e-mails.

People who can’t attend

There will always be people who can’t join a particular call.  Don’t twist yourself into a pretzel trying to find a time that works for everyone.  On this short notice, that’s just not going to happen.   The time you spend sending emails back-and-forth while trying to find a time that works for everyone may be better spend doing other things.  With this in mind, you might be better off just announcing the time you have chosen and if it doesn’t work for some people, inviting them to work with you to schedule an alternative call for them.   Remember that you’re all volunteers, including you.

Reminders

You’ll greatly increase the odds of success of your call if you send everyone you want on the call a reminder the day before the call and an hour before the call is supposed to start.  Do this via e-mail.

Plan for a successful call

Have an agenda in mind for the call, even if it’s just 3-4 points you write down on a piece of paper five minutes before the call starts.   The people on the call, especially if you’ve never spoken before, will appreciate it if you appear to have a plan to move the call forward.   Here are some possible agenda items for your call:

• Introduce yourself briefly.
• Briefly re-state the purpose of the call.
• Tell people on the call what the four or five points are you want to cover, and how long you expect the call to last.
• Thank everyone for their time and commitment.
• Introduce your first agenda item by saying, “Okay, let’s start with the question of the permit we need.  Jane has done some research on that…”
• After you discuss a particular item, a course of action should present itself.  If so, make sure to summarize that action step by saying something like, “Then we’re agreed that the action item is for Jane to call the parks department and apply for the permit we discussed.  She’ll let me know when the permit has been approved and I’ll send out an e-blast to everyone at that point.”
• After you have discussed all the agenda items, if you want another conference call, now is a good time to work on scheduling it.
• When the time allotted for the call is up, say so and prepare to end it, even if you did not get through all the agenda items.   Conference calls that go too long, or longer than the stated time, can alienate people.