Through a community newsletter you can:
- Inform residents about local issues
- Build support for events and projects
- Publicize accomplishments
- Recognize valued community members
- Report on meetings
- Attract members
- Increase community pride
Before you begin your newsletter, find out if there is an existing newsletter being produced in your area. You may be able to contribute news and articles to that newsletter and expand its distribution rather than start a new one.
Form a Newsletter Committee
Your group can produce a newsletter if there’s even one person who’s willing to take it on. However, having a committee of people to make decisions and share the work can add vitality, prevent burnout, and help ensure that the newsletter reflects your community group or association as a whole.
A community newsletter should represent the interests of the whole group, not just the individuals producing it. Before you begin work on your first newsletter, agree on a way to ensure that each issue reflects the needs and views of the community you represent.
Begin by finding a person or a group of people to agree to take on the work of producing a newsletter. The key tasks are writing and editing; layout; reproduction; and distribution. It helps to have people with experience in writing, editing and layout, if possible. A membership survey of your community group or association could tell you what skills and resources people have to offer.
Many of your decisions about the newsletter’s length, appearance and circulation will depend on your budget. It’s possible to produce a newsletter at almost no cost, with volunteer labor, donated copying or printing, and door-to-door distribution. Some community groups go to the other extreme, developing a non-profit status and paid staff. Whatever your budget, it’s wise to figure out your expenses in advance. More details about how to estimate expenses are given below.
What Goes in Your Newsletter
The content of your newsletter will vary depending upon the needs of your group. Some newsletters contain a lot of personal information about neighborhood residents. Others are straight reports on the group’s business meetings and may focus on information and strategies. While other newsletters may cover community events, activities and outreach. With careful planning it’s possible to cover many or all of these concerns, even in a short newsletter.
How long will your newsletter be? This depends on your budget and what is essential to say. A good newsletter can be as short as one page. After settling on a length, structure your newsletter by organizing it into regular features or columns. These might include:
- Committee Reports
- Personal Announcements
- Letters to the editor
- Neighborhood news
- Job listings
- Merchant and/or volunteer of the year
- Coming events
- Community calendar
- Community seminars and/or training
- Editorials
- Resources
- Updates on local issues
- Children’s column
Be sure to include information on how to become a member of the organization, if that applies, such as a contact name and phone number or a tear-off sheet that readers can mail in. In writing your newsletter, aim for a simple, clear style; avoid long words, sentences and paragraphs. Remember, your main goal is communication, and there’s probably a lot to include, so be concise!
Layout
Most newsletters don’t need a complicated, fancy design. Unless you have an expert designer to layout your newsletter, keep it simple. You don’t want elaborate designs or clipart interfering with your message.
If you have access to a computer, any word processing program will allow you to easily put together an attractive newsletter. If you want to experiment with more elaborate design and graphics, check out some of the desktop publishing software that’s available, such as Pagemaker, Quark Xpress, Publish It or Harvard Graphics. These programs are expensive to purchase, but are available at computer centers such as Kinko’s, where you pay an hourly rate to use their equipment (check your yellow pages for a computer center near you).
But remember: a computer is not essential. All you need to create an attractive community newsletter is a typewriter and some paper. Type your text neatly, in one or two columns. Use one side of the paper only (otherwise the other side will show through when the newsletter is copied or printed).
Photos, drawings and other illustrations are nice if you want to break up the text. Do you have an artist in your group who can contribute drawings? If not, check the local high school and community college art departments. Finally you can check art supply stores and large book stores for “clip art” books. They contain ready-made graphics, easy to cut out and paste on your originals. If you want to use photographs, you can improve the quality of reproduction by having a velox made to the size you need from your photo, a service available for under $10 from some copy shops.
For all your graphics, use a ruler to place the picture nearly on the page. For the masthead or title, of your newsletter, you can use your neighborhood group’s logo or create a new design. You may want to invest a little more in this, since it’s something you will be using over a period of time and which identifies your group. See if a member of your group can draw or do fancy lettering, or knows someone else who might donate his or her time. (If you’ve done a survey, you may already have uncovered such resources.)
Getting it Printed
Explore having your newsletter printed free or at reduced cost. Possible sources of free copying are churches, schools, local businesses, community boards and workplaces of members of your group. A local printer might donate the job or offer a special rate in exchange for an advertisement spot in the newsletter.
Getting it Out
Before you reproduce your newsletter, make a list of all the people who need to get it. This could include all members of your group, other members of the community, elected officials, local institutions (such as City agencies, schools, community board members, local development organizations), local press. This will tell you how many copies to print.
Once printed, newsletters can be distributed door-to-door or mailed. (Note: it is a Federal offense to place a newsletter in the mailbox without postage.)
- Be consistent. If your newsletter comes at the same time each month, people will begin to expect and anticipate it. Some groups issue newsletters quarterly.
- Enlist the help of Neighborhood Crime Watch Captains. Ask them to distribute the newsletters and to make sure everyone gets a copy on their block.
- Rather than leave them in the office or lobbies of large apartment buildings, try to get a resident to slip them under each door.
- Some community groups hire neighborhood youth to distribute the papers on the block. Local schools, especially high schools, may have community volunteer requirements that would provide you with the help of local teenagers for free!
- Ask local merchants if you can leave newsletters on the counter for people to pick up. This is an excellent way of reaching out to new potential members.
- If you mail your newsletter, be sure to figure postage expenses into your budget. If your mailing list is large and speedy delivery is not a concern, you may want to save money by sorting your labels into strict zip code order (if necessary) and mailing bulk rate: call the your local Post Office for full details.
Possible Revenue Sources
You may want to sell ads for display in the newsletter to defray your costs.
- Talk to local merchants; they’re often happy to reach out to members of the community through newsletters.
- Stress the interdependence of commercial and residential areas, and hos the health of one depends on the health of the other.
- You may want to offer special rates for larger ads - i.e. $10.00 for a quarter-page ad, $17.50 for half a page.
- Encourage readers to patronize your advertisers, and to tell merchants they saw their ad in your newsletter.
Conclusion
After several issues, you may want to solicit feedback from your members and other readers. Some questions you might ask are:
- What do they like or not like about this newsletter?
- What columns are most/least helpful or interesting?
- Are there any suggestions for change or improvement?
- How could this newsletter provide better outreach for block, neighborhood, and citywide community programs, activities and membership?
