CircleUp: A Great Solution for Organizing Group Emails

If I were to count the number of emails I get in a month from coaches, PTO leaders, and friends organizing sporting events, volunteer efforts, and get-togethers, it would explain (partially) why I don't have the cleanest inbox in the world.  

So many plans are made with groups by sending mass emails back and forth. I spend a good bit of time searching for emails for the nugget of information I need for a game time and place, or what snack I signed up to bring my 4^th grader's class during standardized tests. Well, I've been testing a new, free service called CircleUp that I think will change the way many events are planned and communicated over the web.

One of the quickest ways to describe CircleUp is, think Evite, the wonderfully useful site for sending and responding to party invitations. CircleUp is just as easy to use but is good for every kind of group activity. I can see so many uses for CircleUp, but the most obvious is for organizing sports events, Girl Scout activities—any volunteer effort that involves a group that usually reaches consensus by trading scads of emails.

Here's how it works. You sign up for a free account. Then in a question bar you ask a detailed question, such as the email I received this morning from my 10-year-old's travel basketball coach, asking which days this week she is available for a playoff game. Instead of sending out 11 emails and tallying the various answers in all of them, CircleUp would let him do that in one place, and the other email recipients would be able to view all of the answers, too.

The site gives you lots of nice options for organizing the answers, too. You can list up to four specific choices, which the receivers can pick by clicking on a dial to the left of preferred one, then add a comment in a comment box. Or you can ask them to rank up to four options, or if you have multiple issues, such as uniform sizes and colors, you can choose a rows/columns options.

You can embed media images, including photos, brochures, maps and directions. By clicking a few buttons, you can move the responses directly into an Excel spreadsheet, or to Yahoo! Calendar. Soon, you'll be able to transfer the info into PDF files and Word documents, says John Payne, CEO of CircleUp. The site, which launched last month in alpha stage, soon will also deliver one email with all the answers organized by common responses to the original sender. Imagine how helpful that would be if you're dealing with an email list of anywhere between 20 and 100 people?

Payne says the company's aim is to make organizing information from large groups via email easier for the person asking the questions as well as for the people answering them. CircleUp does that. Next time you have to send out a question to a long list of email recipients, give CircleUp whirl. Then let me know what you think about it.