Efficiently email to unit leaders?

Say, I note that there are lots of useful ways to contact various groups through the directory, but it seems like one is missing - contacting groups of unit leaders across the stake.

Specifically, in a stake leadership role, I would like to contact all of the YM (or YW, or Bishopric, or EQ or Primary or...) folks from each unit. To announce an activity, or request help or... Is there a convenient way to accomplish this? Right now it looks like I have to go into each unit directory and copy and paste the leaders email addresses into my own list (which almost immediately becomes out of date).

I suppose I or someone else in the stake could offer to maintain these lists and email them to all of the stake leaders as each time they change, but that seems like like it is contrary to the whole idea of a centralized directory.

Under Leader and Clerk Resources, the Send a Message feature has the beginnings of what you're asking for, but it has several limitations:

• Since it's under Leader and Clerk Resources, it is only available to clerks, executive secretaries, and bishoprics/stake presidencies
• The leadership groups that span wards are available to an even smaller list of people (not including assistant clerks, for example)
• The only current options in this area are all bishops, bishoprics, HPG leadership, EQ presidencies, and RS presidencies across the wards in the stake

Since the above option is so limited, it's hardly worth mentioning, except that it shows that the Church has done some thinking about the usefulness of distribution lists across the wards. For it to be truly useful, most of those limitations would have to be removed. I don't see the need for most of the limitations, anyway -- if you can go to each ward one by one and email each ward's YM presidency, then you could repeat that for each ward in the stake. It doesn't give you any permissions you don't already have -- just some convenience.

There is a problem for some e-mail clients and web-mail services with large e-mail lists. When they become too large then they treat the message as spam. Sending messages to several small groups will avoid this issue.

OK, if spam is the issue, how about a simple tool to allow the generation of the lists.

Also, I don't need to contact every member of each YM aux. Just the presidents. Similarly for the other aux.

I know I can do it manually - but then the list is out of date as soon as a new calling is made.

In LDS Tools for portable devices, there is a list feature that I use to generate custom lists, such as a stake committee, or our ward choir. I can then send an email to these specific groups. It is very simple to use and changes and additions are easily added. This would be a good feature for Clerk Resources.