You need a way to communicate with your applicants. There are many ways but since we are in the 21st century, I recommend you do online submissions. It will not only save trees and composers’ money, but it will also allow you to have the data already organized in beautiful excel sheets.
Create an email dedicated solely to your new choral music opportunities, whether receiving scores or choral composition opportunities. That way, you and your audience know where all the information and scores are. Something like newchoralmusic@yourdomain.com works. If you can’t do those, you can always create a new Gmail account.
Just make sure there is a way for people to reach your opportunity and for you to have a conversation with them.
To apply to your opportunity, composers need a form to fill with their information and upload their scores/recordings. I have had the most success when using Google Forms because people know how to use it. When finished, the form gathers all the information organized, with the ability to create graphics, tables, etc.
Many organizations include forms within their website. That works great as well!
GOOGLE FORM TEMPLATE
Some resources you might want to check are Google Docs, Website forms, Gmail, Canva, etc. Remember that, no matter what route you go, you’ll need to test that your method works before sharing it with your audience. You don’t want people complaining that something is wrong with your submission platform.
If you need mailed applications, my advice is that you include an easy-to-follow address, as well as some guidance for international applicants. I’ve suffered when mailing documents to international competitions, not knowing if my files ever made it for days or weeks. Offer participants help through email.
The disadvantage of mailed applications is that not many composers will have the resources to send scores as it can get expensive over time. Many international applicants might have trouble paying the delivery fee or even having the scores mailed due to restrictions in their countries or malfunction of their post services.
One thought on “Submission platforms, communication methods”
Comments are closed.