Feedback Inappropriate Post

Caryl from Waiwhetu

I’m Caryl, the person who posted “In-appropriate post” on Friday, 2 November. My post generated a lot of discussion with replies from 90 Neighbourly members regarding the “inappropriateness v. appropriateness” of members receiving an email addressed to them personally from the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) via Zoe Hawke. I would now like to reply to all those who responded to my post (90 replies) on the communication I have had with Zoe Hawke’s Manager at the Mental Health Foundation regarding the email sent by Zoe to Neighbourly subscribers’ personal emails and addressed to them personally. Firstly, however, I would like to acknowledge Neighbourly Leader Cameron Taylor’s post on Monday, 5 November, which explained Neighbourly Admin’s point of view on this matter. The essence of his post was as follows:

“It was a generic message sent to a large number of members, and I can assure you that the Mental Health Foundation does not have access to your personal details”, and that, “receiving these messages is a condition of being a Neighbourly member …….”.

While I appreciated Cameron’s post on Monday it would have been helpful if Neighbourly Admin could have immediately issued a statement like this shortly after I had posted my message. This would have immediately answered the concerns that many people had about the email being sent to them via their personal emails and would have likely prevented the long discussion that continued over the weekend and on Monday.

On Monday, I contacted Zoe Hawke’s manager by telephone at the Mental Health Foundation and discussed the issues arising from members receiving her email via their personal emails. He said he would investigate the matter and get back to me which he did promptly. I would like to share with all Neighbourly members the comments I received from Zoe’s manager explaining MHF’s position on the matter. Direct quotes from his email to me are as follows:

“Neighbourly asked us to do a direct message to their subscription database who opt to receive emails from them. The message was to remind people about looking after each other and ourselves as we approach Christmas. We agreed and think it’s awesome that they want to actively support the wellbeing of their communities.”

“The email message came from Zoe as she is a parent and understands how stressful Christmas can be! We wanted the message to be engaging but it absolutely wasn’t our intention for the message to appear as a direct one-to-one email! Neighbourly sent the email out through their system which drops recipients’ first names into the email, so I can assure you we have not had access to any Neighbourly user data (including email addresses).” He went on to say:

“I haven’t personally spoken to Neighbourly about how the system worked but there are definitely lessons for us to learn from this. Aside from the issues you raised with me, we received thousands of email responses (I think due to the apparent individualized email template) which we have found very challenging to manage. We are pleased that the majority of responses have been really positive and grateful for the reminder, but it is not our intention to be an unwanted presence in anyone’s inbox and we will consider how to do this differently should we undertake something similar again.”

“Thank you again for your feedback”.

I very much appreciated receiving Zoe’s manager’s email and wanted to share it with other Neighbourly members so you too will have a better understanding of how and why the email was sent to your personal email addresses.

I’d like to thank everyone for contributing to this robust discussion. I definitely do not regret my original posting and feel we are all much more enlightened on a number of matters as a result.

Best wishes to you all for a Happy Christmas!!