Supporters are the backbone of any nonprofit. Through their donations, volunteer work, event attendance, and general support, your organization can run smoothly and contribute to its cause. That’s why it’s crucial to establish and maintain meaningful relationships with your supporters.
While there are several new marketing tactics that nonprofits can take advantage of, the traditional nonprofit newsletter should not be overlooked. Nonprofit newsletters are an inexpensive way to remind your audience of your organization’s mission and entice them to lend their support.
However, these days, everyone’s email inboxes are flooded with junk mail. How can your nonprofit break through the clutter?
In order to help you out, we’ve created a nonprofit newsletter template. With this template, you’ll be able to create an engaging, informative nonprofit newsletter without spending too much time on it. In addition to the template, we’ll go over the following topics:
- Basics of Nonprofit Newsletters
- Elements You May Include In Your Nonprofit Newsletter
- Exploring the Sections of Our Nonprofit Newsletter Template
- Nonprofit Newsletter Tips
Kwala is all about delivering high-quality graphic design to nonprofits in order to upgrade their nonprofit marketing. With a well-designed nonprofit newsletter, you can grab your supporters’ attention by conveying information in an interesting way. We’re happy to provide you with a comprehensive nonprofit newsletter template and accompanying tips to help you get started!
Basics of Nonprofit Newsletters
It’s likely that your organization already sends out a nonprofit newsletter. However, going back to the basics can help you improve upon your current newsletter and create a better experience for your supporters.
The main purpose of a nonprofit newsletter is twofold. First, nonprofit newsletters are a tool to convert subscribers into volunteers and donors. To do so, you’ll have to convey meaningful information about your nonprofit and include clear calls to action.
Second, for current volunteers and donors, the nonprofit newsletter keeps them engaged and interested in supporting your organization. Providing them with relevant news and updates will keep your organization fresh in their minds.
Why Nonprofit Newsletters Are Important
While we’ve covered the purpose of nonprofit newsletters, it still might not be clear why they are such an important marketing tool. To help you out, we’ve compiled some reasons why nonprofit newsletters are such a crucial component of your marketing strategy. By leveraging nonprofit newsletters, your organization can:
- Keep supporters updated about what your organization is doing
- Remind supporters of your mission
- Make supporters feel more involved and engaged
- Help you garner support through donations, volunteer sign-ups, event registrations, or petition signatures
- Diversify its marketing strategy
In summary, nonprofit newsletters can help you communicate with supporters and encourage them to stay involved with your organization.
Why Your Organization Should Use a Nonprofit Newsletter Template
Now that you understand how pivotal a nonprofit newsletter can be for your marketing strategy, you might be wondering how to create one that maximizes engagement. We’ve eliminated that worry for you with our nonprofit newsletter template.
There are so many benefits to using a nonprofit newsletter template, including:
- Flexibility and customizability
- Easy to use
- Saves you time and energy
- Creates consistency in your branding
- Lets you focus on newsletter content rather than design
By using a nonprofit newsletter template, you can not only save your team time and energy, but you can also share a higher-quality newsletter with your supporters.
Elements You May Include In Your Nonprofit Newsletter
The beauty of a nonprofit newsletter is that you can customize it to fit your organization. To start, you can send out different types of newsletters and analyze your open and engagement rates to see which are most effective. Once you discover the formula that works for your nonprofit, you can simplify the newsletter creation process and use the same template every time.
While our nonprofit newsletter template contains many different content ideas, it is up to your organization which ones you’d like to implement. Here are the potential building blocks of your nonprofit newsletter template:
- Beneficiary or donor story
- Milestone update
- Upcoming events
- FAQs
- Relevant news articles
- Community highlights
- Call to action
Mixing and matching these elements will allow you to create an engaging nonprofit newsletter template that caters to your organization and its supporters.
Exploring the Sections of Our Nonprofit Newsletter Template
In addition to the brief overview of our nonprofit newsletter template sections, we’d like to go over each element in greater detail. Let’s jump right into it!
Beneficiary or Donor Story
Storytelling allows you to deepen your supporters’ connection with your nonprofit. While brands and corporations try to leverage this tactic, nonprofits have a unique position to tell stories that highlight the genuine good they have done.
Whether you’re telling the story of a beneficiary who is grateful for the help your organization has provided or that of a donor who is proud to invest in your cause, you can humanize your nonprofit and allow people to see how they can truly make a difference.
Reach out to beneficiaries or donors who may be interested in sharing their stories. Consider providing a link within your nonprofit newsletter to a form people can fill out.
Milestone Update
Anyone who is truly invested in your cause will be interested in seeing the progress your organization has made to uphold its mission. Milestone updates show your supporters that your organization is working toward and achieving its goals.
To help people visualize your progress, consider adding a timeline graphic of your project or initiative. For example, if your goal was to raise a certain amount of money for a particular fundraiser, show your supporters how that goal came to fruition. Your timeline would likely start with your organization conceptualizing and planning the fundraiser and end with you hitting your goal donation amount.
Your updates don’t necessarily have to be about donations. There are many different types of milestones a nonprofit can achieve, including a feature in a news outlet, rebranding, or acquiring a record number of new volunteers. Any success that is important to your organization’s mission will excite your supporters and remind them that their support drives tangible results.
Upcoming Events
Your nonprofit newsletter is a perfect opportunity to promote any upcoming events your organization may have. To start, make sure you include the date and location of the event so your supporters know when and where they can attend.
Additionally, you’ll want to notify them how they can participate in the event and where they can get more information about it. For example, if your event is a color run, it’s important to tell people that they can run, walk, or cheer on the sidelines, but they should also remember to wear white and bring a change of clothes.
Lastly, include the registration form link. That way, you can direct people to the event registration page on your website and make it easy for them to sign up.
FAQs
If your organization frequently receives questions from current and prospective supporters, you might consider including an FAQ section in your nonprofit newsletter. You can even turn your FAQ section into a series to keep your supporters engaged.
An added benefit of answering people’s frequently asked questions in your newsletter is that you can compile a list of them for new subscribers and use that list to introduce them to your nonprofit. If you send out a welcome email to new subscribers, adding some FAQs could bring it to the next level.
While you can use the FAQ section to answer questions your organization typically receives, you can also ask people to submit questions. Include a link to a question submission form at the end of your FAQ section to collect additional questions.
Relevant News Article
When you connect your cause to current events, you make the urgency and importance of your mission easier to grasp. Adding a relevant news article to your nonprofit newsletter template is a unique way to inform and engage your audience.
If you find a news article you’d like to include, make sure it’s from a reputable source. Then, provide a link to the article, and summarize the main idea behind it. That way, your supporters can get the gist of the article and decide if they’d like to read it to learn more.
Community Highlights
Many nonprofits are part of a greater community, and your nonprofit newsletter is an ideal place to highlight that involvement. Whether you’re promoting another organization’s fundraiser or encouraging people to attend a local event, showing your support for the community around your organization helps humanize your nonprofit.
Additionally, you can use this section to show how your team gives back. Sharing pictures of your team members volunteering at a local soup kitchen or participating in a local 5K demonstrates your organization’s commitment to bettering its community.
Call to Action
Above all else, you’ll want your nonprofit newsletter to engage your supporters and inspire action. The best way to do this is by scattering calls to action throughout your newsletter.
Examples of calls to action could be asking supporters to donate, sign up as a volunteer, register for an event, sign a petition, or download a resource. Anything that you can direct your supporters to do that will help further your mission can be an effective call to action.
Nonprofit Newsletter Tips
Beyond using a template, there are many ways to make your nonprofit newsletter engaging for your supporters. Check out these nonprofit newsletter tips to make yours the best it can be:
- Create engaging subject lines. The subject line of an email can make or break a reader’s experience. A powerful or interesting subject line can grab your supporters’ attention and make them keep reading. A lackluster one can cause people to skip or delete your newsletter from the get-go. Start off your newsletter strong with a subject line that stands out.
- Include relevant links where you can. Making your newsletter interactive is an effective way to engage supporters. If you provide links that relate to your content, then you can drive traffic to your website or other related resources. Additionally, you can analyze how many clicks each link receives to determine which types of links your supporters use the most.
- Make sure your call to action is clear. When including a call to action in your nonprofit newsletter, you’ll want it to be as clear as possible. That way, you can maximize the chance that your supporters will follow through since they’ll understand exactly what they have to do.
- Look at other nonprofit newsletters for inspiration. It’s never a bad idea to draw inspiration from other organizations. If you’re really stuck on ideas for your next nonprofit newsletter, check out those from other nonprofits. There might be a unique element or format that you can adapt to your own organization’s needs.
Using a combination of our nonprofit newsletter template and tips will allow you to create an engaging, informative nonprofit newsletter for your organization.
Final Thoughts
From design to content ideas, there are so many elements that go into creating an effective nonprofit newsletter. To eliminate some of the work and stress that accompanies the creation process, we’ve developed our own nonprofit newsletter template for organizations to leverage. We hope that this template along with the tips we’ve provided will help nonprofits to create, update, or transform their nonprofit newsletters in order to successfully engage with supporters.
While nonprofit newsletters are one way that graphic design can enhance your nonprofit’s marketing materials, there are tons of ways to incorporate graphic design into your organization’s repertoire. The articles below highlight unique ways that your nonprofit can leverage graphic design tools in order to provide a better experience for your stakeholders, including donors, volunteers, and board members:
- The Ultimate Nonprofit Board Report Template and Tips. Nonprofit boards offer guidance and support for charitable organizations. Keep your board meetings organized and efficient with a proper nonprofit board report template.
- Fundraising Flyers: Examples & Tips to Make Yours Stand Out. Need help creating an attention-grabbing fundraiser flyer? Check out this article for some helpful tips.
- 5 Things to Keep in Mind When Designing a Logo. Your logo is one of the strongest tools in building brand recognition. Learn how to design yours effectively with the help of this article.
