Using Google Groups to share a Gmail account

So right now, I’m part of a committee to bring about 100 people together to celebrate a TED styled event in Princeton. Up until now, the committee has been working very well together using a Google Group. The way that it’s set up is pretty locked down. We only have committee members in the group, and it’s not advertised. We have other tools for that, such as a WordPress blog, and a Gmail account, with which people can contact us, exchange ideas, and offer sponsorships, etc.

The only problem is that no one person on the committee really deserves the burden of solely being responsible for the Gmail account. It’s about to get very busy, since we’re about to start advertising heavily for our upcoming event. So, wouldn’t it be great if the Google Group that we all already subscribe to and get emails from could just be posted to by anyone? Well, no, not exactly — some of the back and forth on our Google Group really needs to be behind closed doors — no one makes soup for the first time in a crowded room, if you get my meaning.

But we all wanted to be able to get the messages from the Gmail account without having to remember to login, remember the account info, remember that it’s not just us, etc.

It turns out it’s easy — I’m not sure why I thought Google would block the action:

1. Sign up your Gmail account on the Google Group as a posting member.
2. Forward a copy of your Gmail account’s incoming messages to your Google Group email account, which only members can post to.
3. Everyone on the group starts seeing messages to the Gmail account along with other group activity.

1 caveat I’ve found so far: replying to the email will send a message back to the group and back to the Gmail account, but not to the original sender, as one might expect. You’d have to do a teensy bit of copy/paste, or as my mom likes to call it, magic!

Know of a better way to do this, without adding any caveats? Let er’ rip on the comments!