Effective June 15, 2022, SMART Recovery is deactivating all of our Google Groups
We realize that some of you use this platform to share ideas with and receive support from other SMART Recovery volunteers, so we want to make you aware of other options that are already in place.
- To share ideas and ask questions regarding meeting management, attend one of our 3 weekly Ongoing Training and Support: SMART Meeting Management (SMM) meetings. You can access the link by logging into VolunteerHQ and clicking on “Meetings for Volunteers.”
- If you are in need of support and cannot attend the SMM meetings, please reach out to your Regional Coordinator (the list can be found here.) or the Volunteer Support Department by calling the National Office or emailing volunteerhq@smartrecovery.org.
- If you have questions that you would like the National Office staff to answer, please use the contact us form in VolunteerHQ or attend our monthly Q&A sessions with the Volunteer Department.
- If you have information that you think would be helpful to share with other volunteers, please use the contact us form in VolunteerHQ to let us know and, if appropriate, we can add it to VolunteerCONNECTION (monthly volunteer newsletter) and/or create an announcement in VolunteerHQ.
Before closing this convenient forum for volunteers, I ask the leaders of SMART to please keep it open to allow volunteers to discuss the issue.
thank you.
Richard Tupper aka tup
soltup1@gmail.com
Thank you for the feedback, Richard. After learning of a security issue involving our Google Groups, we made the decision to close them down. This decision was made taking the following numbers into account
Approximately 350 of the 1367 registered volunteers chose to be members of SMARTCAL (26%)
39 different individuals posted in SMARTCAL (11% of members)
77 threads were started since Jan 1, 2022
Topics Discussed:
• Event/conference/publication sharing 40 (52%)
• SMM/S4V reminders 30 (39%)
• National Office Communications 2
• Tool discussion 1
• Looking for alternate/co facilitator 1
• Contacting National Office 1
• Reporting website issue 1
We do have several ways of sharing information and staying connected with our community:
• VolunteerHQ (VHQ) announcements (people can also post comments and ask questions as a response to the announcements)
• People can provide our Volunteer Dept. information to share in the announcements area of VHQ
• VolunteerCONNECTION newsletter
• Special announcement emails
• Social Media
• Blog articles, podcasts, videos
• Monthly Volunteer Q & A with our Volunteer Dept.
• SMM and S4V meetings
• Regional Coordinators/Local Coordinators – many have meet-ups, email groups, etc. with the facilitators in their region
I hope you find these options to be helpful alternatives to the Google group distribution list, and I thank you for your support in this transition.