The Newsletter: Purpose and How It Works

What is the newsletter for?

The newsletter lets anyone who's interested keep up with your activities. Use it to share upcoming or past events, or any news relevant to your nonprofit and its members.

Unlike a standard email campaign — where you push a message to an entire group — newsletter subscribers have actively chosen to sign up, and they may be people who are not in your member database.

This lets you reach the people who actually care, without blasting every member with news they didn't ask for. Fewer unwanted emails means fewer spam reports — and a stronger sender reputation.

This article walks you through where to enable sign-ups and where to find your list of subscribers.

Where can people sign up?

The whole point of a newsletter is that recipients choose to subscribe themselves. They can be part of your nonprofit (in your member database) or completely outside it (i.e., the general public).

You can add a sign-up option in two places: the header and the footer of your website.

In the header

In the Website > Header module, select the center section of the header.

Then select the newsletter button.

That's it — visitors can now sign up directly on your website! Don't forget to save.

In the footer

In the Website > Footer > Other module (at the bottom of the page), check Offer a newsletter sign-up. You can also add an explanatory text if you'd like.

Done — visitors can now sign up from your page footer as well!

Where can you find your list of newsletter subscribers?

Go to Emailing > Mailing Lists to see all your recipient lists. You can set up a list from those not linked to the community. That list will then collect newsletter sign-ups.

To configure a list to receive newsletter sign-ups, select a list from the newsletter widget settings page (Website > Header/Footer).

You can also add people to this list manually — for example, if they requested to be added in person.

When someone unsubscribes from the newsletter, their status changes from "Subscribed" to "Unsubscribed," and they will no longer receive it.
How do you send an email campaign to subscribers?
Once people have signed up for your newsletter, you can send them an email campaign from Emailing > Campaigns → New Campaign by selecting the mailing list linked to your newsletter subscribers. Just follow the steps in this article: Create and send an email campaign.