Dev Diary #25: This is the news!
Extra extra! Get your copy of the Atlantic Forum newsletter today! (by signing up as a patron! ;) ).
Hello everyone! Today we are launched our latest initiative, the newsletter. Something that isn't very special in todays world, which organization doesn't have a newsletter? Well for starters Atlantic Forum didn't had one in the first 6 months of its existence.
In the first month we were discussing internally whether we should have a newsletter or not. I am not particular fond of receiving many newsletters, and I usually leave the unopened in my mailbox. So why then join the newsletter family? In the past few months we tried reaching our patrons mostly through social media, and in anticipation of the member only part of the website, and trusting the proactivity of our patrons, we felt that a newsletter would not be necessary. And yet we discovered patrons didn't know about the opportunities we had for them - and missed out on them, like the 1st round of High School Program trainers at Clingendael in October, or the Atlantica Call for papers (a way to earn back your patronage).
Having decided a newsletter was useful, we then had to solve the question of frequency. In the past months we had quite a few opportunities pop up on short notice. With a monthly news letter certain opportunities might fall in between editions, or have the deadline very close to the send date of the letter. A weekly or bi-weekly newsletter on the other hand felt to pushy and would probably end up unopened in mailboxes. Then there was also the issue of delivery on demand - if you do a weekly newsletter, you have to send it out weekly. Say we sent it out on Monday, this would mean someone (read me for someone) has to prep it on the Sunday before. Atlantic Forum is a part part part time initiative (we spent roughly 8h a week on it), do we then really want to spend so much time on newsletters? At the end we decided on a monthly newsletter, to be sent out on the first Monday of the month. Any other opportunities can still be found on the website and social media, and if it was a really really cool opportunitiy, then we can still send out an extra edition.
With the newsletter we seek to bring together as much information as possible condencsed in a simple overview so that you as patrons have all opportunties in one overview. As always we love to hear from you, should you have any ideas or suggestions on the newsletter (or anything else we do) reach out on FB, Twitter or send an email to info@Atlantic-Forum.com