Reporting and Communication
One of the great benefits you have in pulling together a green living program (GLP) is that you now have the ability to institutionalize your campus-greening efforts, to build and expand upon past efforts, and to ensure the future successes of environmental supporters on your campus. To truly create a foundation for others to build on and to institutionalize your program, one of the best gifts you can leave to your predecessors is a detailed look at what happened under your leadership.
As one of the main points of a GLP is to institutionalize information about environmental efforts on campus, it is very important that program reps record their work. This information can be passed along to future reps; can help GLP captains and coordinators evaluate the effectiveness of their activities; and can help give steering group members a sense of what reps are doing in the dorms.
Checklists
In the checklists, include areas where the reps can record how long they worked on certain tasks. Also include feedback questions for the reps to answer, elaborating on what they did, what worked and what they would do differently if they did the task again. Ask that the checklists be returned before the next GLP meeting, giving the captains and coordinator enough time to read through them and prepare responses to the barriers or ideas the reps raise in them. Depending on how many reps your program has, it can be difficult to get feedback consistently from everyone other than in written updates like checklists.
Between Checklists
Updates to Captains and Coordinator
If your GLP meets every two weeks, or less often, consider having the students email very brief updates to the captains and coordinator to keep the lines of communication open. Through the updates, the captains and coordinator might be able identify an area in which a rep needs help and can therefore offer advice or otherwise address the issue at an early stage.
Updates to Reps
The captains and coordinator should also send out periodic updates to reps between meetings and checklists. The updates can include additional details about a particular campaign, upcoming events for reps to publicize or any other note that needs to be addressed with the whole team.
Try to collate all relevant items into one update, which may require multiple emails among the captains and coordinator to get everything together. Only one update email should go to the reps to prevent them from feeling bombarded with information. If possible, be consistent about when you send updates by sticking to a particular day, for example. This way reps will know when to expect the updates. If you meet on mondays, for example, email your updates only on tuesdays, thursdays and sundays.
There is a great benefit to email dialogues because they are easy to record and refer to in the future. Be sure to set up mailbox folders for yourself and the reps to better enable you to track and find particular emails. With 15 to 20 or more reps, there will be many messages going back and forth and your inbox will most likely fill up very quickly!
Of course, live conversations with reps—in person, over a meal or via telephone—will most likely resonate better than an email. However, be sure to take notes and create a record of the conversation for yourself and the coordinator or other captain, whichever the case may be.
Weekly Hour Reporting
You will need to set up a system to ensure that you report the reps’ hours on time so that they are paid on time. Work with a financial administrator, either in your department or another department, to learn what needs to happen to get the reps paid in a timely fashion.