how to create a shared email account for pathways

Toastmasters is asking for an email account that three people can access for Pathways:

On April 25, TI contacted the VPEs, Presidents and Secretaries of all clubs in District 46 and advised them briefly of their roles as “Base Camp Managers” for their clubs under Pathways. The VPE will be responsible – with the President and Secretary as backup – for performing certain tasks in Base Camp. TI recommended the club establish a single email address accessible by all three club officers. Base Camp notifications will be sent to this email address listed in Club Central. Please review this April 25 email for more details.

So how do you do this? In a corporate club, you can use a shared mailbox and optionally set it up to forward to your actual email. Luckily, there is a free equivalent.

Creating a shared gmail account

Sign up for a new free gmail account. For example toastmasters12345@gmail.com (where 12345 is your club number). Or any other address that is free. Give this address to Toastmasters.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Who needs another address to log into. Or maybe your employer blocks gmail. Well no worries. You’ll never need to log in again. You can setup a filter to forward all emails from toastmasters:

  1. Go to the email forwarding page: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/fwdandpop
  2. Click “add a forwarding address” and add the President’s email
  3. Repeat for VPE and Secretary.
  4. Go to the email filters view: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/filters
  5. Click “create a new filter”
  6. Enter toastmasters.org in the from box
  7. Click “create a filter with this search”
  8. Click “forward” and choose the address of your president
  9. Create two more filters – one for your VPE and one for your President

Alternatively, you can see what actually goes there. I suspect that signing into Base Camp once a week removes the need for the email. But it is just a suspicion right now.