Intro to Using Google Tools for Clubs
Moving to the Cloud Makes Volunteering Easier
Are you a club president or secretary, a volunteer board member for a non-profit, or in charge of a citizen organization for your local government? All of these types of organizations and their members can benefit greatly from using the google tools, collectively referred to as GSuite. When I took over as the soccer league president I was given a huge box of paper that contained previous meeting agendas, grant applications, player registration forms, and so on. I didn’t have time to deal w/ that much paper and I didn’t have the desire. My goal was to move to a cloud based system so EVERY board member had access to all of these documents.
Work Collectively but Not At the Same Time
We wanted to be able to work collectively but not necessarily at the same time. One of the biggest challenges was finding a common time to meet face to face to plan the upcoming season. Every board member was a parent and worked during the day. Carving out time for a face to face meeting was nearly impossible. By moving our documents to the cloud, each of us were each able to work on our piece of the organization when that person had the time. Our league secretary could post meeting agendas at 6 am when her baby was up early. The coach coordinator could create a practice schedule for all of his coaches at 10 pm after his kids went to bed. The league computer geek could post all of these things on the league website during her lunch hour. Before moving to the cloud, we had to do this all at the same meeting.
GSuite, more than email and search
Most of us are familiar with two tools from google.
- The google search engine which allows us to type up any ole phrase, hit “go” and be returned with a plethora of info. We love google search even if it is slightly evil and creepy, but it works so well for so many reasons.
- GMail is google’s online email service. Gmail is much like yahoo mail, hotmail, rocketmail, and if you really want to date yourself, AOL. On the surface it is a no frills basic email service.
The GSuite (which gmail and google search are just two products) is a whole slew of tools that all function within the Chrome browser or as individual apps on your smartphone or tablet. All of these tools are accessed using your google account; which most of the time is a personal gmail address like My.Name@gmail.com
Examples:
- Distribute meeting agendas to board members, modify the agenda, and everyone still gets the updated version
- Share and re-use practice plans season after season and between coaches
- Quickly create a tournament bracket
- Meeting sign-in form
- Host & lead a book discussion
- Common calendar and publish to smartphones
- Create a map of your playing and practice fields
- Publish a 5k route
- Shared “to-do” lists where any member can cross off an item using Keep.
All of the items listed are possible using GSuite plus many many more. This website is here to help.