Communications Committee

The Communications Committee establishes guidelines for, oversees, and maintains the various approaches the Meeting uses to build community. These include: 

• • • Establishing channels for information about Meeting activities available to members, attenders and newcomers.

    • Facilitating Friends working together and coming to know each other better.

    • Maintaining a *list serve* that limits posts to announcements of upcoming meeting activities (such as Adult Education presentations), Quaker-related activities (such as AFSC events), requests by Friends (for information, referrals, Light for themselves or others) and announcements of Friends' activities outside the meeting (concerts, new babies, and the like). There is no discussion on the list serve, and Friends are encouraged to respond directly to Friends who posted a question, not to the whole list.

    • Publishing a *Newsletter*, in print and electronically, once a month. It contains the draft notes from the previous month's Meeting on the Occasion of Business, contact information for meeting committee clerks, and a calendar of regularly scheduled events. Queries and Advices for the month are listed on the front page. Also included are a form for contributing financially to the meeting and the guidelines for applications to the Alice Herman Fund for sojourning fellowships. As the editor is led, the Friendly Notes may also include other articles that are Quaker- or Meeting-related (such as interviews, inspiring quotations, poetry or drawings).

    • Publishing a *Directory* that lists all all members and attenders who wish to be included, and is provided at no charge. Names and contact information are listed, along with names of children and partners, if desired. A printed edition is published each year, usually at the beginning of the year, and a searchable electronic version is updated periodically.

    • Maintaining a *website* at https://www.fgcquaker.org/cloud/santa-monica-friends-meeting, with information about the Meetinghouse location, times of Meeting for Worship, information about First Day School, a brief description of our unprogrammed worship, and information about the Meeting’s Committees and activities. Our site also includes photographs of Friends at Meeting activities.

    • Submitting a budget yearly to the Finance Committee describing such regular expenses as those for printing the monthly newsletter and the annual Directory, paying for website hosting (3 years) and list serve hosting (annually).

    • Holding Committee meetings as needed, in which Quaker process is followed.