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  • From: Una Smith <una.smith@att.net>
  • To: msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [MSAR] Making contacts
  • Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:17:20 -0700

This is a sort of pet peeve of mine. There are many pages on the web
about MSAR units, with no contact information. So anyone wanting to
contact the unit for any reason has to be very persistent. Often there
is a parent organization, such as a sheriff's office or multi-resource
SAR team. So I hunt around on the parent organziation's website to
identify someone who may know how to reach the MSAR unit and I e-mail
a request for the name and e-mail or phone of someone who can tell me
something about the unit.

Usually I get exactly what I asked for. Sometimes I get a reply from
the person I wanted to reach. Both good, although simply giving this
information on the web page would be more efficient.

Sometimes I get no reply at all. But sometimes I get something even
worse than no reply: an unnecessarily rude answer to the effect that
the information I requested is confidential. Huh? Really? Why! Do
these organizations not want to get favorable press, recruit new
volunteers, receive donations, find out about training opportunities,
etc.?

What happens when someone who doesn't know your unit tries to contact
it? You can find out, by asking someone (a SAR contact in another
state, a distant family member or friend) to try. Give them only the
URL for your unit's page and ask them to make contact with your unit,
and keep notes on what steps they took and the result of each step.

If you do this, the result *should* be no problems found. But if you
do discover a problem, this will be very valuable information.

Periodically you should test your callout procedure, from the caller's
end. For example, I know a unit that stopped getting any calls. They
were listed in a state SAR resource directory, with a phone number. I
called the phone number: it was the number of a former member who had
left the unit, possibly with the intention of starting a new one. This
former member was intercepting the unit's callouts.

Try to look at your website from the point of view of an outsider. Or,
ask an outsider to look at it for you. Listen carefully to what they
say.

Hope this helps,

Una Smith
New Mexico




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