An Electronic Newsletter Gets the News Out Faster

Tired of time-consuming, labor-intensive mailing parties for your congregational newsletter and other church-wide mailings? Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church, Costa Mesa, Calif. (239), has adopted e-mail as its primary means of communication not only for its newsletter, but also for other mailings throughout the year.

Richard G. Scoby, editor of OCUUC’s The REACH, says 330 households receive the newsletter electronically. And unless people specifically opt out of that version, that’s what they get. A paper copy is printed for non e-mail users and others who request paper.

Scoby says the congregation saves money, material, and labor with electronic mailings. That method also puts the mailings in the hands of readers days sooner, and they all get it at the same time. “With bulk mail, distribution is scattered over two to five days,” he said. Creating a bulk mailing also requires specialized knowledge of Postal Service regulations.

Orange Coast sends its newsletter and two to three other mailings, such as canvass information, as a PDF (Portable Document Format), which is a universal file format that virtually all computer users can access. If they aren’t able to access PDF files they can easily download the PDF reader for free through a link on the church Web site (www.ocuuc.org).

Another plus is that the newsletter and other electronic mailings can be sent in color, making them more attractive and probably increasing their readership. Recipients can choose to read the newsletter on the computer screen or print it out in color or black and white. Scoby keeps the size of the electronic files small so that people with older, slower computers can receive them.

The church still has mailing parties, but they’re smaller and faster. Since only 100 copies of most mailings are sent out on paper, Orange Coast dropped its U.S. Postal Service bulk mailing permit, saving $200 annually. The permit required mail to be sorted and bundled by zip code.

A copy of the newsletter is also posted on the Web site, but with personal information (phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and a section about joys and sorrows) removed for security reasons. However, Scoby said he’s planning on posting a hidden copy (accessible only to friends and members) of the complete version of the newsletter on the Web site.

He said the electronic version doesn’t save him any time, but doesn’t take any more time either except for a half-hour to create the sanitized Web version. And because the paper mailings are smaller, they’re easily organized now.

The church office manager and members themselves notify Scoby of e-mail address changes and additions and deletions. He believes that as recently as six years ago mass e-mailing of the newsletter would not have been possible, but now that the software has become improved and is more accessible to most people, he has received few complaints.

The newsletter of the Unitarian Church of Evanston, Ill. (432), is e-mailed to about 250 households and postal mailed to 300. “We do it for two reasons, to save money and because it uses less paper. We’re part of the Green Sanctuary program,” said Laura Nelson, the congregation’s part-time director of communications.

The document is sent as an e-mail message, with little formatting, and that makes it accessible to most of the congregation’s members, says Nelson. “Our members are mixed about this. A whole lot of them just find a paper copy more comfortable, but the adamant recyclers among us are happy about the e-mail version.”