Technology tools come and go, it's best not to get too wedded to one or another. Usability, price and support can differ widely and it's worth checking with other clubs and their officers to learn what works best in practice.

Let us know your experiences and recommendations on tools so we can update this list.

Video Conferencing

For hosting online meetings there are a variety of tools that have different strengths and weaknesses. There's a variety of pricing models, and differing abilities to affordably scale from small E-board meetings to large Club meetings with hundreds of participants.

COVID-19: Vendors are offering enhanced or premium offerings for free or at reduced prices during the crisis.

Suitable for large club meetings

FreeConferenceCall.com

Zoom

Suitable for smaller E-Board and Committee meetings

If you already have a paid Google G-Suite account or Microsoft Office 365 account, included in your subscription you have access to Google Hangouts Meet and Microsoft Teams respectively.

Although not as full-featured as FreeConferenceCall.com and Zoom both tools provide easy ways to move from Chat, to Audio and Video, either 1 on 1 or in small groups.

Google Hangouts Meet also provides real-time audio transcription on screen, that can be useful for participants with hearing difficulties.

Apple users can conference with up to 32 participants using Group FaceTime, if they are running iOS 12.1.4 or higher, using iPhones, iPads and Macs (and audio on Homepod and Watch) - but FaceTime does not work with non-Apple devices.

Open source with end-to-end encryption

If you're concerned about security issues with Zoom, or distrust data mining by large tech companies, an alternative that works well for small and large meetings is Jitsi.

Jitsi Meet


Online Voting

Some of the video conferencing solutions support polling or virtual arm-raising for quick and easy public votes within a meeting (see Zoom), but for private votes a more sophisticated voting method may be preferred.

Some clubs have used Election Runner for their officer elections. For a club with up to 300 voting members the cost is $29. There are also simpler, free solutions, like Doodle or expensive ones like Simply Voting (CTIA uses this), and one of solutions priced in between is Opavote who charge based on the number of club members and candidates, regardless of the number of contests.