BuddyPress.org

Hi,
I’ve been going round in circles for a bit trying to figure out a way of allowing users of a BP site to communicate easily with each other individually, and in groups, but also allow users who are NOT part of a group to message all members of a group.
Here’s the scenario – There are about 80 members of a community drumming band. These are all members of a group called ‘The Whole Band’. As well as this super-group, there are smaller groups, such as ‘The Dancers’, ‘The Committee’, etc, which are smaller sub-groups. We need a way to send email to everyone, to smaller groups, or to individual members, and have these messages stored for later retrieval or viewing through the website.
I need to find an easy way for members of a group to email all other members of a group, and was thinking of using the forums as the main repository for group messages (with one of the plugins installed to send out email alerts).
But I also need to allow people who AREN’T in a group to message all members of a group (and receive replies to their messages). I was thinking of creating a form on the group forum page which allows non-members to insert a new forum post, and I’ve managed to get this working, but I’m not sure how to ensure that the ‘guest’ poster will receive replies, or how to alert the group members. Also, I’d need to allow them to reply to replies – effectively continuing the forum thread, but without allowing them access to the whole group forum. (I’ve asked questions about this in another thread).
All in all, I’m just not sure whether I’m even going down the right track in trying to do it this way, and whether there is either a better email-based plugin I can try – though I have searched around for ways of sending emails to groups and haven’t found anything that allows it for non-admin users.
Or perhaps I should try installing something like fEmail (http://flourishlib.com/docs/fEmail) and try to plumb that in somehow?
If anyone has any bright ideas on the best way of getting this kind of functionality, I’d be glad to hear them…

Cheers