Maintaining a CERT Program
Step 1: Communicating With Volunteers
Words of Advice: Tips for Communicating With Volunteers
Click on a topic to review tips from experienced CERT Coordinators:
Frank Lucier - San Francisco, California
Distinguish Between Types of Communications
There are two types of communications:
- Day-to-day communications (newsletters, phone trees, email, mailings).
- Communications used during a disaster (HAM radios, family service radios, runners).
It is important to distinguish between the two. What works day to day will probably not work in a disaster.
Joe Lowry - Memphis, Tennessee
Use Newsletters
We have a reservist newsletter that we send out via the mail. The newsletter is an important tool for maintaining and building the program. If you offer drills, refresher classes, and other events of interest to program participants, a newsletter can be an economical alternative to all the individual flyers and announcements you'd otherwise send out.
Rachel Jacky - Portland, Oregon
Use Many Methods Including Phone Trees
We use every method that we can–newsletters and announcements that we mail out, email messages, neighborhood-association newsletter articles, and print/TV media pieces.
It's also good to use the phone trees organized by the teams. We've used their phone trees several times to activate the teams in real emergencies, and we rely on those phone trees to function well. Using the phone trees to communicate non-emergency information would be good practice for real-life emergencies.