What's new for our club in cyberspace.

Hello Kiwanians,

What can I say, I am a certified "computer geek" although I can't really take the blame for this latest addition to our electronic plate. No, Joan Bittfield gets the credit for this one. After our board meeting this afternoon, Joan asked me if I had ever done any blogging. This is probably one of the few electronic mediums that I have not yet sampled. Joan thought this would be a lot of fun to do for us, our club, and to pass along even more thoughts, ideas, and information to our membership. So, welcome to the Hastings Kiwanis Blog!

It has been an exciting week for me and Kiwanis. There have been several changes to the electronic medium used by our club. Probably the most satisfying for me anyway, is the addition of a PayPal account to our Kids Against Hunger project. This opens up a whole new source for funding this extremely worthwhile and much needed project. This provides people an opportunity give to KAH, that is completely safe and secure. The system also provides them with an immediate receipt for their tax purposes and does not require any maintenance on our part to send out these receipts. A "donate" button has been added at the bottom of our Kiwanis website homepage along with a copy of the article that has been purchased from the Tribune. There is also a donate link within the KAH website pages. I will be adding more as other pages on the web site are updated. Help spread the word that people who wish to help, can now do so just by visiting our web site (www.hastingskiwanis.org). Also, don't forget that by using GoodSearch (powered by Yahoo) as your internet search engine, you can help raise money for KAH just by surfing the web. One cent for every web search is donated to KAH at the end of the year. Another part of GoodSearch is GoodShop. By visiting the GoodShop web site, a large selection of online shopping companies (such as Amazon, Best Buy, etc) can be selected and then a percentage of your purchase gets donated to KAH. If you do a lot (or only a little) of online shopping, take a few seconds to check GoodShop.com to see the company you are ordering from participates. If so, just click on their link and then your purchase will earn extra money for KAH.

I have also setup a club email address on our hastingskiwanis.org email server. This account is accessible to officers, board members, and committee chairs to use to send information to our membership. The advantage to this is that the web site committee maintains the address book containing all of our Kiwanis email accounts. Also in the address book are a number of email lists, such as YCPO Committee, Youth Services Commitee (one for each of our committees), board members, officers, etc. These lists help simplify the selection of email recipients and are maintained by the web site committee as they change. This is a valuable tool as more and more committees start having regular meetings and need to start sharing information. A member of the web site committee can send the email message or the committee chair, officer, etc. can login and send the message themselves. This account also allows for several "identities" to be created so the person sending the message can use the account and send the email as themselves, with their email address so that any responses to the email will go directly to their account. This eliminates the need to keep checking back for any replies.

And finally, at Joan's urging, we now have this Kiwanis Blog. It is yet one more communication tool to help spread the word about the exciting things happening in our club, our district, and International. There is also a facebook page for our club and we may try to copy this blog to it as well. With the internet, the possibilities are nearly endless! Keep checking back, we'll try to keep you on your toes with new and exciting ideas as they present themselves.

David Kempf

Hastings Kiwanis Webmaster