Phone Trees

Some voluntary organisations use "phone trees". Using this system the call originator phones two or three group members. Each of those phones two more members and so on until the whole group has been reached. The obvious disadvantage of this method is that it is relatively slow. Less obvious is that if one member is unavailable it can mean a whole "branch" of the tree does not get the message, or at least that plans need to be revised leading to further delays.

This method ties up valuable personel making multiple phone calls, when they should be on-route to the incident.

Passing information many times by spoken word can be like playing "Chinese Whispers" - text is far more reliable.

A more robust version is to divide the phone list into a number of sections with one administrator phoning the numbers from each. However, this is still comparatively slow and labour intensive.

Phone Trees are not really suitable for a professional organisation.