School Outreach communication encompasses emails, phone calls, and visits used to share information about school resources and opportunities, study abroad scholarships and programs, and/or opportunities to host AFS students. It is helpful to record school outreach so that school staff are not contacted about the same thing by multiple people AND so that all volunteers and staff who work with the school can be informed of key information related to the school or an individual school staff member.
If you are looking for information on how to record a school contact about a
hosted participant, see the article on Logging Contacts and Visits.
For best practices on recording your school outreach, please keep reading. This article covers:
- Recording Contact with an Individual Educator or School Administrator
- Recording Important School Information
- Recording a school activity or event such as a school presentation or hosting an AFS table at the school
Recording Contact with an Individual Educator or School Administrator
When contacting an individual educator or administrator at a school, it is best to send your message right from the individual’s contact log in Global Link. If you've already contacted someone by phone or via email, you can record your interaction in the same contact log.
If you are already in the school’s record in Global Link, you can access the individual’s contact log from the school description page by clicking on the name of the individual here: (Instructions to find this page can be found here.)
If the individual you are contacting is not here, you can try finding them through a Person Search or you can add the person using these instructions: Updating Key School Personnel.
Find the person you are going to contact and click on the Contact Log tab. You can then choose to:
1. Emailing from Global Link
From the Contact Log tab, click on Compose Email.
You can choose the Contact Type of “School Relations” and a Contact Subtype that is most appropriate for your message. Complete a Subject line, compose your email, and send!
Please note that most school personnel have subscriber alerts to prevent them from getting solicited to host exchange students, so you may get a pop-up message asking if you are sure you want to send your message – click “OK”
When the individual responds, the reply will come to the email address you have on file with AFS.
2. Recording Completed Outreach
If you are simply updating a contact you have already made, choose to Create Contact Log from the Contact Log tab.
On the next screen, select a Contact Type of “School Relations,” and use the drop-down menus to complete the other fields. The Subject should be the nature of your message or any key highlights. Additional information would go under Contact Details. Select Save once completed.
Recording Important School Information
While connecting with educators or administrators, you might learn something that is relevant to the whole school such as a person’s willingness to promote AFS programs or details about their acceptance policies or procedures for hosted students. These notes would be helpful for anyone wanting to know more about the school, so please record them on the school’s record so that they are visible to others working with the school.
For details on updating a school’s acceptance policy of exchange students, please see Updating School and District Records.
If the update you want to share isn’t specific to accepting exchange students, it can still be made visible to all volunteers and staff, visit How to Update School Information for detailed instructions.
Note: If you are looking to update a School District’s policy or information, you will need to do so by looking up the School District record in Global Link. Instructions can be found here. Once updated, the School District information will show up in MyAFS and in Box 19 for all schools in the District:
Recording a School Activity or Event
To record an event or activity you held at a school, like a presentation or a tabling event. Please record it as a Promotional Campaign. Once recorded, it will show in the “Campaign” section of a School Record. See Finding School Information for details.