Yes, even very to-the-point emails don't get read by many. I discovered this accidentally when I slightly rescheduled a practice and more than half the choir showed up at the regular time. It was unfortunate but I had clearly spelled it out in the email. It may even have been a good reminder to at least open and skim the damn thing.

We also have a chat group, which helps a little to build a 'choir community' (sharing recordings and other things) and spread important news. Maybe that could be helpful for you.

Yeah, we noticed that with emails too. We're going to try WhatsApp as many of our members are young and relatively new to Canada, and they all use WhatsApp for their day-to-day communications.

I also noticed my kids (Gen Z and younger) do not use email. Nor do my Boomer parents. So maybe it's a generational thing?

I recently asked my choir what mode they would like to communicate, and a number of people really liked the idea of a GroupMe thread, so I'm going to start one of those.

Typically, I have the best success texting the group (but with a mix of android and iphones, this doesn't work that well, and people sometimes reply to old text chains that include people no longer in the choir, hence my desire to moderate a groupme group, so I can control who has access). I put up weekly choral ordos with practice tracks and other things, so I will send out a text with the link to that week's ordo, and give any special cliff notes at that time. Emails are really hit or miss.

a number of people really liked the idea of a GroupMe thread, so I'm going to start one of those.

GroupMe has a poor attachment system which is to say nothing can be sent besides things from your camera roll/gallery/whatever it is called for your device. I mentioned my preference for WhatsApp, which our chief would do as he’s from a country where it is normative. And I think that sending a pdf is essential for music (and not just sending music: sending documents as a pdf is a part of the job).

I can’t even send one in mixed group messages with iOS and Android: I would have insisted on WhatsApp for that reason alone if it were up to me. But it also lacks basically anything useful (GroupMe, not WhatsApp— do you people think that I’d make this mistake?) : text formatting, lists… even Messenger, on mobile, has formatting.

WA doesn’t require an account for another platform which rules out Messenger (although apparently people do use it without FB and it’s apparently played the role that WA does in Nordic countries so I don’t know, but it’s above only GroupMe in my rankings).

I think that my objection to a drive is that it's one more email or account to manage, one more cloud plan to pay for. And it gets cluttered quickly.

If you're delivering PDFs electronically, either a kiosk or email work better than messages - better to use a message to alert/point to the kiosk or email. People can save them to a Notes or Book or similar file/library app on electronic tablets.

I use edited screencaps for sharing images of smaller things that are being sent via message.

As an aside for @MatthewRoth, WhatsApp does support some formatting:

_underscores_ for italics
*asterisks* for bold
Starting a line with hyphen+space creates a dot pointed list

Messages now need to be super-short, no fluff, in WhatsApp - with strongly enforced group norms about keeping the chat for a chat-group, and the official stuff for the official one.

Yeah this is sort of my problem. WA also allows mods-only messages and then you can DM the mods for anything like missing rehearsal, questions, etc.

I'm fairly sure our version is the paid version. I work for an ordinariate parish, and I believe the entire Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter uses Flocknote as its official means of this sort of communication. It was certainly already in place when I stepped into this position.

Well, then there's a thought. I know the Archdiocese uses it for inter-parish communications. Worth investigating. Thanks for the reply!