WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Vital Communities will transfer the 38 town-specific listservs it operates to a new nonprofit organization called UVLists.
The two organizations signed an agreement Oct. 1, according to news releases issued by both nonprofits. The transition is scheduled to be completed by the end of the month.
Kevin Perron, president of UVLists, said that current listserv subscribers will automatically be subscribed to the lists they are currently subscribed to. Instead of “lists.vitalcommunities.org,” the listservs will change to a new “uvlists.org” domain name as the sender. Subscribers will then have an opportunity to opt out.
It took “a lot of people, a lot of effort to move cautiously but quickly and make sure these lists stay functioning,” Perron, of Thetford, said in a Friday phone interview.
He estimated it will cost $10,000 to $15,000 to transition and operate the lists in the first year, but expects it will be closer to $10,000 annually — the majority of which will go toward the servers that support the listservs — in the years to come.
“The number of volunteer hours far and away shadows that, if you were to put a dollar amount on it,” Perron said.
There are around 75 volunteers, including those who serve as listserv administrators and serve on various boards and committees, he said. The 38 town-specific listservs have around 21,000 subscribers, according to UVLists, which is a Vermont-registered nonprofit organization.
“We are glad to help with this transition, allowing subscribers who want to keep participating in the town-based listservs to do so,” Vital Communities, a White River Junction-based nonprofit, wrote in a Thursday news release. “Although Vital Communities will no longer have an ongoing role in the town-based listservs, we wish UVLists the very best as it stewards these lists into the future.”
Vital Communities will continue to maintain three Upper Valley-wide listservs, according to a news release: events, goods, and services-plus. It will also maintain topic-focused listservs, including Upper Valley Climate Action and Upper Valley Farming.
In mid-August, Vital Communities announced it would cease operating the town-specific listservs and directed subscribers to switch over to Front Porch Forum, because, in part, the organization “realized that the town-based listservs have outgrown the level of support and expertise that Vital Communities can provide,” according to a statement.
Community members, including current and former listserv administrators, rallied together to create a plan to preserve the email lists, which ValleyNet — an Upper Valley-specific internet provider that eventually morphed into ECFiber — founded in 2004. Vital Communities took over the lists in 2014.
“It was, in its own way, helping ECFiber get off the ground; that community, word-of-mouth connections, made all the difference,” Perron, who is also a member of the ECFiber board, said. “From here it’s grown to 38 towns. Schools depend on it. Town governments depend on it. Small businesses depend on it. … (They’ve) really become an important component to keep our towns connected.”
In a way, Perron wasn’t surprised by the attachment people have to the town-specific lists, even in an age when social media dominates.
“I think it’s because of the simplicity: You don’t have the algorithms, you don’t have the ads and the noise,” Perron said. “It’s just in its purest, simplest form an easy way to communicate events or, ‘Hey, I don’t need these lawn chairs anymore, does anyone want them?’”
Technology, Perron said, should be “simple, clean and easy to use.”
“That’s what the lists are,” he added.
Visit uvlists.org for more information.
