Increasing the impact of your newsletter.

Just one of the many jobs we regularly do for some of our charity clients is to design their newsletter or magazine.

There has always been a stipulation that as a charity you should not be throwing money at an overly designed item when the funds could be used to further your mission. In part this should be taken into consideration, but please remember that no-one wants to read something that looks unappealing, so although you might not be spending a lot of money on your newsletter, is what you are spending on it seeing any return at all?

Here are some of our helpful tips for charities when looking at the design of your newsletter:

Don’t be afraid to ask

Remember you are a charity and the aim of the newsletter is to see a return on your investment. So if you are talking about an appeal make sure you let the reader know how they can donate.

Add some colour

Colour helps a newsletter look more appealing and something you have put thought into. If you only want to slightly increase your printing costs, it might be simply making it a two colour print job rather than one.

Don’t make articles too long

Try and keep your article length at a reasonable level for people who just want to skim read. This could mean the introduction of a stand first that would sum up the article but in turn entice the reader to read on.

Keep the article relevant to the charity

We see it time and again with charity magazines: lots of articles that focus on what’s going on internally in the charity. Your readers are not going to want to know it was Dawn’s birthday last week, they are going to want to know what you are doing with their donations. Our advice is, if you think an article is not relevant, don’t put it in.

I hope this helps when you are looking to produce your next newsletter. If you do want to chat through any of your ideas or see how we could help improve the return on investment, please give me a call on 01603 340 750.