What Is It?

  Electronic mail ("E-mail") is similar in concept to regular mail. You send letters to individuals and organizations at their office or home addresses and receive letters from them at your address(es). (Some people have multiple addresses with mail boxes at each, although it is more likely that they will designate all their mail to come to one). You can receive mass mailings (called "mailing lists") from NGOs located inside and outside Jordan and send your own mass mailings to others (The writer is not sure that such mailing lists exist in Jordan) . You can subscribe to the electronic equivalents of journals, commercial magazines and newspapers. But beware! There is always the chance that you will receive e-mail that is not of interest to you - "junk" mail, which might prove a nuisance and even a hindrance. At the extreme end, you might get viruses that infect your system and cause malfunction. It is always necessary to update your anti-viral software scanners.

Advantages of E-Mail to NGOs in Jordan

1. E-mail is fast and extremely cost-efficient. Sending a proposal to a donor or sponsor anywhere around the world will take only a matter of seconds or minutes. And, although you sometimes have to pay to send it (depending upon your method of access), data transmission through e-mail is much cheaper than overnight courier charges and relatively cheaper than faxing. This means that NGOs in Jordan can access many people without incurring too large a cost.
2. E-mail has broad reach but is perceived as personal. It can enable you to extend your fund-raising net to a greater number of donors simultaneously and yet, be directly responsive to their individual needs as contributors. For example, if you have planned a special event which has to be rescheduled due to bad weather, you can broadcast the change quickly and cheaply.
3. E-mail fosters accuracy and direct attention since there is no co-worker to get messages confused, no paper to get lost. You craft your own message and your recipient will craft his/her own response back to you. If the message cannot be delivered for some reason (such as an outdated address for a donor), it should be bounced back to you so that you know it was never recieved and why. This way you know if a donor or sponsor is choosing to ignore your request for help.
4. E-mail is asynchronous. You send your message when it is convenient for you. The response comes at your recipient's own good time. You both don't have to be free simultaneously to communicate.
5. E-mail can reduce meeting time. It can sometimes substitute for meetings or if e-mail is sent in advance of meetings to outline the agenda, educate participants and develop consensus, those meetings where face-to-face exchanges are important can be shortened.
6. E-mail allows staff to work from home. All those days of lost productivity and stress at the work that was piling up might have been relieved if you had been able to conduct your correspondence and/or do your research without ever leaving your house.

What are the Disadvantages of E-Mail?

1. You have no control over if or when a person chooses to read his mail and if or when he will respond. For that reason, never send anything that requires an immediate reply.
2. E-mail is not secure. Information that is confidential (like a list of potential donors and sponsors) or politically sensitive (like a criticism of a particular NGO) should be delivered another way.
3. Once sent, it's gone. Embarrassing situations abound when you have been too hasty in your reply. It is not uncommon for someone to send a mailing that he or she thought was going to a single person when in fact it was sent to an entire mailing list. It is never too late to mend. Read your e-mail after it has been dispatched, and if you detect a slip, it is a good idea to rectify the error.
4. Sometimes you encounter breaches of Netiquette which can make you uncomfortable or even angry. Netiquette is a set of e-mail rules most users live by. For example,

• Avoid "flaming", attacking someone personally for something they have written.
• Do not use all caps since it has the effect of SHOUTING.
• Write clearly and carefully. Because you are not talking face to face, it is much harder to detect things like sarcasm in a message. If you are given to using sarcasm, it is much safer to make a joke clear by using <-joke->, <-grin->, or a happy face, a caricature made of ASCII symbols that resembles a face on its side :-).
• Keep messages short and concise. If you need to attach long files, make sure that they are delivered properly (It is worthwhile to double-check the final product before dispatching.

  There are mailing lists (sometimes called "discussion groups") that almost anyone can subscribe to, lists that include people you don't already know. The focus may be similar in that these mailing lists are typically quite specialized and would not be of interest to most people. They are typically restricted to under 30 people. These discussion groups may prove to be great forums for NGOs in Jordan to get in touch with one another and compare experiences.

How Do Mailing Lists Work?

  The mail list is administered by a central source to whom you send your message. The source, in turn, re-sends your message individually to the others on the list or uses it to compile a "digest" of submissions that is sent out periodically.

To Subscribe to a Mailing List

  A word of warning: While subscribed mailing lists can be quite helpful, they are delivered directly to your mailbox and can overpower it, depending on the amount of activity it generates. You might want to subscribe to one to just test it out - both for content and activity level - and then unsubscribe later if you find it a bother. One which you might want to test is USnonprofit-1 (http://www.washington.edu:1180/nic-news/clippings/1994/09.06/0017.html)

  If you are intrigued with mailing lists and want others from which to choose, you can search the following mailing list directories:

1. Liszt
2. The List of Lists
3. Publically Accessible Mailing Lists

  Whereas mailing lists are small and tightly focused, newsgroups are open to anyone and deal with a broad range of topics. They can be useful in providing answers to questions you might not be able to find anywhere else because you have the resources of all the Internet community at your disposal. They can be forums for new ideas and a means of forging new relationships, hopefully good ones.

  You do not have to get permission to join a newsgroup. You just jump in and post - although it is often wise to read the other postings and get a feel for the dynamics of the group before committing yourself. (The term "flaming" originated from an unfortunate interaction on a newsgroup and it happens too often, particularly when new people ask questions that are regarded as common knowledge by the rest).

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