National Preparedness Month tips

By now I hope you are aware of FEMA's "National Preparedness Month"
campaign and their website listing emergency groups from all over the
country. You can see it at

http://community.fema.gov/connect.ti/READYNPM/grouphome

One problem I spotted is that many ham folks are not sure what "group"
to list their ARES or similar organization under. Hundreds of ARES
groups sign up, but our impact get diluted when they are split into
different categories. So I have two suggestions:

First - list your group under the non-profit category on their website.

Yes, there "was" a communications category a couple days
ago, but it disappeared and may or may not be stable.

Second - when you list your group, be sure to put the words "Amateur
Radio" somewhere in your group name - even as a suffix.
In that way we can do a search for ham groups using
those words. For example, we'd probably never find the
"Podunk County ARC" but we'd see them as the "Podunk
County Amateur Radio Club"
Neither of these suggestions is a definite fix, but they should help.
Most of all - sign your group up! If you provide emergency services to
other, let's get the recognition.

Allen Pitts, W1AGP
Media & PR Manager
ARRL - the national association for Amateur Radio
225 Main St. Newington, CT 06111
www.ARRL.org