eRosters a New Twist on a Familiar Tool

Local Section Rosters -- A Brief History
Back in 20th century local section bi-monthly rosters were sent to local sections secretary via hard copy printouts. In the mid-nineties along came “Rosters on Diskettes” service. With this service, local sections could easily produce mailing labels, generate lists of emails and begin to target activities to their members. However, the production of diskettes was labor intensive and only one set of rosters was available to each local section on a bi-monthly basis.

Enter eRosters
In June 2005, a new service for delivery of local section rosters was launched. eRosters which replaced the Roster on Diskette service, is a significant improvement of an already valuable service. While the roster files themselves remain unchanged, the eRosters distribution offers two additional advantages to local sections. First, roster updates are now available on a monthly basis as opposed to bi-monthly diskette mailing. Second, while the distribution of the rosters on diskette was limited to one per section, eRosters are now available to all local section officers for download via Chemistry.org.

So, What’s the big deal?

Your local section will continue to use the roster to generate mailing labels and email distribution lists. However, in addition to names and addresses, the rosters contain information about your members that can help you plan events and activities to reach out to your diverse membership.

For instance, are you interested in starting a Younger Chemists or Silver Circle Committee? The roster contains the birth year for all of your members. Therefore, you can sort the roster by birth year and quickly identify members your members who fall into these two groups. Or perhaps, you want to find out which members work for a specific company in your area, simply sort the list by employer. Want to send a welcome letter to new members? Review the monthly activity report to find out who recently joined your section.

eRosters is a secure service available via chemistry.org and access is restricted to current local section officers. To request access, please contact the Office of Local Section Activities.

Mark O'Brien
Office of Local Section Activities

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