How to Create a Nonprofit Newsletter People Actually Read

There is a club newsletter that started in 1998 as a six-page Word document. The secretary still writes it. It takes her four hours a month. It has a "President's Corner" that nobody reads, minutes from the last three meetings, and a list of upcoming bingo nights. Open rate is unknowable because it goes out as a printed copy or a PDF attached to an email. Three people have replied in the past year — two asked to be removed from the list, and one was the secretary replying to herself by mistake. Nobody knows if anyone reads it.

This describes the newsletter at a lot of small clubs and orgs. It is not a failure of effort. It is a failure of format.

Why Most Club Newsletters Fail

The format was designed for a different era.

A six-page PDF mailed to members made sense in 1998. Today, it competes with everything else in an inbox — or in a pile on the kitchen counter — and it almost always loses.

The core problems:

Too long. Six pages assumes members will sit down and read. They won't. Two to three minutes is all you get, and that is generous.
Wrong format. A PDF attachment requires the reader to download it, open it, scroll it. Every step is a reason to stop. Plain email wins.
No clear value per section. "President's Corner" is about the president, not the reader. Meeting minutes are for the record, not for enjoyment. Readers open newsletters for information they can use — dates, events, things they need to do.
No feedback loop. If you do not know whether anyone opens it, you do not know if you are wasting four hours a month. You probably are.

What a Newsletter Should Actually Do

Before worrying about format or tools, get clear on the job.

A newsletter for a small volunteer org should do four things:

Keep members connected between events so they do not feel like strangers when they show up
Announce upcoming events — fish fry, car show, potluck, chili cook-off, annual dinner — with dates and details that people actually need
Thank people by name when appropriate, especially donors and volunteers who gave significant time
Tell one short story that reminds members why the org exists — a family the food pantry helped, the number of kids who played in the league this year, the scholarship recipient who sent a note

That is the whole job. Bylaws summaries, parliamentary procedure updates, and the treasurer's long report belong on a separate document that members can request. They do not belong in the newsletter.

How Often to Send

Monthly is the right cadence for most small orgs.

Weekly is not sustainable for a volunteer. You will start strong, miss a week, feel guilty, miss two more, and quietly stop. A dead newsletter is worse than a late one.
Quarterly is too infrequent. Members will forget they subscribed, will not recognize your org name in their inbox, and will mark it as spam or unsubscribe. Four emails a year is not a newsletter — it is an occasional reminder that you exist.
Monthly hits the window where members stay familiar with your org without feeling spammed. If you have a busy event season, you can send twice in a month without anyone complaining.

Set a send date — the first Monday of the month, for example — and hold it. Consistency matters more than perfection. Members who know to expect your email on the first Monday will actually look for it.

Format: Email Beats PDF Beats Mailed Paper

Stop sending PDFs.

A PDF attached to an email requires the reader to click the email, click the attachment, wait for it to download, open a PDF viewer, and then scroll. That is five steps before they read a single word. Most people will not take all five steps.

Plain email wins because:

It opens in the same window. No extra clicks.
It displays on any phone without a special app.
It is searchable — members can find the bingo night date later by searching their inbox.
You can track opens and clicks with a free email tool. You will finally know whether anyone reads it.

Mailed paper costs money, takes more time, and reaches people who may not want a physical newsletter cluttering their kitchen. It made sense when email did not exist. It does not make sense now as the primary format for a small org.

If you have members who specifically ask for a printed copy — an older member with no email, for example — print one or two copies for them specifically. Do not design the whole program around the exception.

What to Put In It (and What to Cut)

Keep:

Upcoming events — one or two sentences each, with date, time, location, and ticket or registration info if applicable
One thank-you — recognize a specific person or group who helped at the last event
One short story — two to four sentences about impact, a member milestone, or something your org did that mattered
One ask — volunteer need, ticket sales, dues reminder, donation ask — one per newsletter, not six

Cut immediately:

Full meeting minutes (post them somewhere separately; link to them if needed)
"President's Corner" as a recurring feature unless the president writes something genuinely useful every single month (they will not)
Committee reports that are relevant to three people on the committee
Multi-page treasurer reports (post the financial summary somewhere members can access it; a one-line update in the newsletter is enough)
Anything that starts with "As per our bylaws..."

The test for every section: Would a typical member be glad they read this, or would they skip it? If the honest answer is "skip it," cut it.

How to Write It Without It Taking Four Hours

Four hours is too long. The newsletter is taking too long because it is too long.

A 400-word email newsletter should take 30 minutes to write, send, and confirm. Here is the system:

Step 1 — Pull your notes (5 minutes). Keep a running document or a notes app where you drop items throughout the month: event details, thank-you names, one story, the one ask. When it is time to write, you are assembling, not remembering.

Step 2 — Write in sections, not paragraphs (15 minutes). Write four short sections — events, thank-you, story, ask. Two to five sentences each. Bullet points where appropriate. You do not need transitions or an introduction. Just get to the point.

Step 3 — Read it out loud once (5 minutes). If you stumble reading it, simplify. If it is longer than two minutes to read aloud, cut something.

Step 4 — Send it (5 minutes). Schedule it for the next morning if you are superstitious about sending at night. Then close the laptop.

The newsletter is not a literary project. It is a tool for keeping members informed. Treat it like one.

Free Tools: Mailchimp and MailerLite

You do not need to pay for an email tool at small org scale.

Mailchimp is free up to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends per month. It is the most widely used free email tool, which means there are tutorials for everything, and it is easy to find help when something goes wrong. The free plan does include ads inside your emails, which is a minor annoyance.

MailerLite is free up to 1,000 contacts with 12,000 monthly sends. Slightly cleaner interface. No ads in the free tier. A better choice if you want something that looks a little more polished out of the box.

Both tools will give you:

Open rate and click tracking (you will finally know who reads it)
A working unsubscribe link on every email (legally required)
Basic templates you can use without hiring a designer
List management so you do not have to manage a spreadsheet of addresses manually

Do not pay for anything until you have outgrown the free tier. At 500 to 1,000 subscribers, you are a thriving small org email list. That takes most clubs a couple of years to reach.

How to Grow Your Subscriber List

The biggest mistake small orgs make is building the newsletter before building the list.

Start with who you already have:

Current members — if they are dues-paying members, you should have their email. Add them with their permission.
Volunteers — anyone who has given time to your org is already invested. Ask when they sign up.
Past event attendees — if you collected emails at registration or check-in, you have a list. Use it.
Online donors — anyone who has donated online gave you their email address. They belong on your list.

Then grow from there:

Put a clipboard at every event. Name and email, two columns, one person at the door asking every attendee. This is the most reliable method and it costs nothing.
Ask at your annual dinner or dues collection. "Can we send you our monthly updates?" Most people say yes when asked directly.
Post a signup link on your Facebook Page. Pin it. Explain why: "We want to make sure you get our event announcements even when Facebook doesn't show them to you."

The easiest way to grow your list is to put a signup form on your website. Potluck builds that website for you in 5 minutes and includes a contact form from day one. Free to start.

A list of 150 engaged members who open your emails is more valuable than 600 subscribers who ignore them. Build slowly and build with people who actually want to hear from you.

What Makes People Unsubscribe vs. What Keeps Them

People unsubscribe when:

You send too often, especially if the content does not justify the frequency
Every email is a fundraising ask with no other value
The subject line is vague — "September Newsletter" tells them nothing and gives them no reason to open it
The email is long and visually dense with no clear place to start
They do not recognize your org name because you have not emailed them in four months

People look forward to it when:

It is short enough to read in two minutes
The subject line is specific — "Bingo Night is Oct 12 — Here's What You Need to Know" gets opened
There is at least one section that makes them feel like an insider, not a recipient
You thank someone by name at least once per issue — people share newsletters when someone they know is mentioned
It arrives on a predictable schedule, which signals that your org is organized and reliable

The standard is not high. You are competing against every other small org newsletter in the area, most of which are PDFs nobody reads. Show up in their inbox with something short, specific, and useful, and you are already ahead.

A newsletter that arrives consistently, says something useful, and takes under two minutes to read is worth more than six pages nobody finishes. [Potluck gives your org a website and a place to collect signups for free.]

Want to build a stronger online presence? See the full guide: How to Build Your Nonprofit's Online Presence.