District 5110 Email Guidelines for Clubs and District Leaders

Based on the Rotary International Policy on Email
Adopted November 2000

  1. Email pertaining to Rotary should contain "Rotary" in the subject line.
  2. All Rotary Email should contain a signature block that includes the name of the person sending the Email and the sender's title or committee designation (if any).
  3. Each Rotary Club in District 5110 shall establish a complete club email list for communication purposes within their club and from the District. No club member shall be added to this list unless they have given approval to have their email address included in the list and approval to receive regular communications from the club as well as the weekly District Governor's transmission and the monthly District Newsletter from the District and, on occasion, other District Email of importance.
  4. The Club Internet Communications Officer shall have the responsibility of securing all email addresses to be included in the Club Email list as well as managing this list for the club and the District.
  5. The Club Internet Communications Officer shall have the responsibility of forwarding District email messages to the Club email list.
  6. No Rotarian should be added to an "e-groups" or other type of bulk mailing list without that person's permission; excepting mailing lists specifically established by District 5110 for Club Presidents, Club Secretaries, Club ICO's, District Committee Chairs, District Committee Members, and the District Leadership. By virtue of having accepted the duties and responsibilities of their positions, Rotarians included in these positions shall be presumed to have given permission to receive Email pertaining to their positions from the District Leadership.
  7. There should be no presumption of delivery of Email, unless the Email is acknowledged by the recipient.
  8. It is the responsibility of each District and/or Club leader to keep the District Secretary and the District Director of Communications informed of any change in their email address so there will be no loss of communication.
  9. E-groups and other bulk mailing lists shall not be used for expressing political views or for the distribution of "spam," such as jokes and the like.
  10. All policies and procedures contained in the Rotary International Manual of Procedure pertaining to circularization shall be applicable to all Email communication.
  11. E-mail lists shall not be published in any form that is available to the public. Websites containing mailing lists or individual e-mail addresses (other than the e-mail addresses of the webmasters) should be password protected. Such passwords should not be distributed to non-Rotarians.
  12. All users of e-mail are encouraged to maintain an up-to-date version of virus-checking software on their computers in order to protect themselves as well as all individuals with whom they correspond by email.
  13. Attachments to email should be avoided whenever possible. Instead, copy and paste information into the body of the email message. If the club has its own web site, it is preferable to post the attachment to the club site for download and then link to it from within the email message. If an attachment is absolutely necessary, the attachment should only be in the Adobe Acrobat PDF format to keep the file size as small as possible and to insure that it can be opened, read and printed by all who receive it.
  14. Each club has been give copies of the Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 software for distribution among its members to insure that all club members will be able to receive and open Adobe PDF documents.
  15. Forwarding of email messages is discouraged unless specific instructions for forwarding have been given.