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Monthly Impact Newsletter Drafter

Example prompt: "On the first Monday of every month, pull last month's programme outcomes from our Airtable, the most recent beneficiary stories from our 'Stories' Google Doc folder, and the top three news mentions of our charity from the web. Draft a 600-word donor newsletter with a short opening from the executive director, two impact highlights, one beneficiary story, and a clear call to action. Save the draft into Mailchimp and post a preview to our #comms Slack channel for the team to review before send."

The Problem

Most small charities know that a monthly donor newsletter is one of the highest-leverage things they can send — donors who read regular updates give more often and stay longer. In practice, the newsletter slips. Programme staff are busy delivering services, comms staff are juggling several channels, and pulling together the stories, numbers, and links into a single piece of writing each month falls down the priority list. The newsletter ends up irregular, late, or stops happening altogether.

How GloriaMundo Solves It

We build a workflow that runs on the first working day of each month to produce a draft newsletter ready for human review. Integration steps pull last month's programme outcomes from Airtable and recent beneficiary stories from a designated Google Drive folder, where each story file carries metadata fields for consent_status, consent_recorded_date, and any redaction instructions agreed with the beneficiary. A code step then enforces a consent-and-redaction gate: any story without recorded written consent is excluded from the newsletter, any agreed redactions (real names, locations, identifying details) are applied, and the consent decision for each story is logged. A conditional step fails the workflow with an alert if no consent-cleared stories remain, so a non-compliant newsletter cannot proceed. A web search step finds any third-party press mentions of your charity from the previous month. An LLM step weaves the cleared inputs into a 500-700 word newsletter with a clear structure: a short opening from the executive director, two impact highlights with a number each, one beneficiary story written with care, and a single, specific call to action. The draft is saved as a new campaign in Mailchimp (not sent — saved as a draft) and a preview is posted to your #comms Slack channel for the team to edit, approve, and schedule. Glass Box preview shows you the full draft, the consent log, and source material before anything reaches Mailchimp.

Example Workflow Steps

  1. Trigger (schedule): Runs at 7 AM on the first working day of each month.
  2. Step 1 (integration): Pull last month's programme outcomes and metrics from Airtable.
  3. Step 2 (integration): List recent files added to the "Stories" folder in Google Drive and extract the most recent beneficiary story content along with each file's consent_status, consent_recorded_date, and redaction_instructions metadata.
  4. Step 3 (code): Consent and redaction gate. Exclude any story without a consent_status of granted; apply the agreed redactions (real names, locations, identifying details) to every story that passes; log the consent decision and any redactions applied for each story.
  5. Step 4 (conditional): If no stories pass the consent gate, halt the workflow and post a Slack alert to #comms explaining that no consent-cleared stories were available — a non-compliant newsletter is never drafted.
  6. Step 5 (web_search): Search for press mentions of the organisation from the previous month.
  7. Step 6 (LLM): Draft a 500-700 word newsletter — opening note, two impact highlights, one consent-cleared beneficiary story (with redactions applied), one call to action — using only the cleared content from the previous steps.
  8. Step 7 (integration): Create a new draft campaign in Mailchimp using the standard newsletter template, populated with the drafted content.
  9. Step 8 (integration): Post a preview link, the draft text, and the consent log to the #comms Slack channel for review.

Integrations Used

  • Airtable — source of programme outcomes and monthly metrics
  • Google Drive — folder of beneficiary stories collected by programme staff
  • Mailchimp — destination for the draft newsletter campaign
  • Slack — preview and review channel for the comms team

Who This Is For

Communications leads and small fundraising teams at charities that aspire to a regular donor newsletter but find it slips when the month gets busy. Particularly useful for organisations where programme outcomes data lives in a different system from the comms tooling.

Time & Cost Saved

A well-crafted donor newsletter typically takes a comms officer four to six hours each month — gathering numbers, chasing programme staff for stories, drafting, formatting in Mailchimp, and circulating for sign-off. This workflow compresses the gathering and first-draft stages into minutes, leaving the comms officer to do the human work that actually matters: editing for voice, choosing the right photo, and approving the send. The downstream effect is that the newsletter actually goes out on schedule, which is the only version of a donor newsletter that compounds.