I have a dilemma... don't want to come over all Giles Coren, but WWYD?

[ScaryHalloweenSquonkRAAR]

They made me chair of the fundraising committee at dd2's school. Which is fine, I reckon I can do it. Part of the job entails writing a newsletter telling parents what exactly we are planning and what we are doing with the money raised.

There are three of us on the core committee and I have been sending the other two draft newsletters and asking for their comments and amending it where necessary, before asking one of them to print it off and distribute it (she works at the school and can do it directly)

In the last letter, my last paragraph went something like... "if you want to be involved in fundraising but can't make the committee meetings, if you want to let me know your email address, we will keep you involved with all decisions where possible"

It was okayed by both of the others and as far as I was concerned that was that.

When I got the letter as a parent, the last paragraph said "fill in your email address below and we will keep you informed of our decisions."

The two say completely different things and I am unhappy that my name has gone on the latter.

My dilemma is... do I say anything to her, and if so, what? I know from other things she has said that she doesn't handle criticism very well and is likely to say "sod yer committee" if I upset her (which I don't want to do, I like her)

I know it is a small thing, but she had plenty of opportunity to say to me that she felt the last paragraph should be different, in which case I would have told her that I wanted to ASK the parents if they WANTED to they could give me their details, not TELL them that they HAVE to (iykwim)

Feel free to tell me I'm being precious and I should get a life, I won't be offended...

I just re-read what I posted there and I want to let you all know that the paragraph that I drafted was waaaaaaaay better than the one I put here. I just wanted to let you have an idea of what I wrote, I can't remember the exact words, but it would have been better than what you see here

I don't think there's a lot of difference in what has been said other than a degree of tone. Your original sentence was incorrect anyway, in that it had two sub-clauses starting with "if", which doesn't work very well. Personally I would have said "If you want to be involved in fundraising but can't make the committee meetings, please let us have your email address to ensure that we can keep you involved in all decisions where possible." But that's just me .

Maybe your colleague had a problem with that sentence too and just tried to make it work better.

please see my caveat second post, freckle.

Hang on and I'll get the exact wording, and you can see what you think then...

Ah, now you've made what I've typed sound stooopid . Your second post wasn't there when I posted.

I wrote:

"If you do find that you want to be involved with friends of squonkette's school but won't be able to attend the meetings, either the ones at the pub in the evenings, or the ones straight after school in the main classroom, let us know how you would like to be contacted and we will do our best to involve you in any decision making."

Then there was a space for email addresses or phone numbers, with a small line saying that there was no need to fill everything in, just the particular way they wanted to be contacted, if, indeed, they did.

I know I'm being precious, I know it doesn't matter but it's been bothering me.

I'll get me coat

I know my second post wasn't there, I read it and thought "oh god, everyone's going to tell me it's because my first paragraph was shite!!!!"

So what did the final missive actually say?

Your sentence was fine, btw .

the one that parents got said:

"so that we can get in touch about forthcoming events, please fill in the form below and return to school.

name
child's name
address
phone number
email address

telephone
mail
email"

You may get a bigger response to her version if people think they are just providing details so they can be contacted with information, rather than potentially volunteering.

hmmm.... maybe you're right.

I just felt that if she thought it needed changing, the right thing to do would have been to send it back to me with an amended paragraph saying "I've changed the last paragraph because... whaddya think?" rather than just doing it anyway.

I know I need to stop stressing about this. I do understand that there are worse things in life and I shouldn't really have come on here and complained about it, but it has been bugging me all weekend

Problem now is that you may get a lot of responses but you won't necessarily know if these people are expressing an interest in helping out (even though they can't make meetings) or just wanting to be put on a general mailing list.

I do agree that if you have a system of agreeing the wording of letters before distribution, it would have been polite of her to run it past you first.