Newsletters

Newsletters let a foundation or project send an email update to the people in a group, then see who opened it and which links they clicked. A newsletter is not a mailing list: it goes to the members of one group whose type is Newsletter, and it is written and sent from the Newsletters page, not from Mailing Lists.

Who can use Newsletters

What	Who
Read the newsletters you receive (Me lens)	Every signed-in user
Write, send, and schedule newsletters (Foundation or Project lens)	Executive directors, and people who can manage the foundation or project

If you don't see Newsletters in the sidebar of the Foundation or Project lens, you don't have permission to send newsletters for it. Contact the foundation or project's executive director.

A newsletter is sent to the members of a group whose type is Newsletter. Only groups of that type can be picked as a newsletter's audience; other groups, such as a Technical Steering Committee or a Working Group, are not listed.

To create one:

Switch to your Foundation or Project lens.
Select Groups, then Create Group.
On the first step, choose Newsletter as the group type.
Finish the remaining steps, and add the people who should receive the newsletter as members.

See Create a group for every step. You can also start from the newsletter itself: if the foundation or project has no Newsletter group yet, the Audience step offers Create newsletter group, which opens group creation in a new tab with the Newsletter type already chosen. When you're done, come back and select Refresh groups.

Switch to your Foundation or Project lens and select Newsletters in the sidebar.
Select Create Newsletter.
Work through the three steps: Audience, Content, and Send. Use Next and Previous to move between them, and Preview to see the newsletter as recipients will.

Once you have picked an audience and entered both a subject and a body, your draft saves automatically as you work. You can also select Save as Draft and come back to it later from the Drafts tab. Until all three are filled in, nothing is saved, so if you leave the page earlier your work is lost.

Audience

Under Group, pick the Newsletter group to send to. The recipient count opens a Recipients list so you can check who will receive it.

If someone is missing, enter their email under Someone missing? Add them to this group and select Add. They are added to the group, so they also receive future newsletters sent to it.

If no Newsletter group exists, the step says "There are no groups in name yet" or "None of the groups in name are newsletter groups". Create a Newsletter group as described above, or ask a manager of the foundation or project to create one, then select Refresh groups.

Content

Subject: the headline recipients see in their inbox.
Body: the newsletter itself. You can paste directly from Google Docs or Word. Markdown isn't supported.

To have AI draft the newsletter, select Generate this with AI, paste your raw notes into Your raw content, and select Generate. Generating replaces anything already in the subject and body, so you're asked to confirm first if they aren't empty. Review and edit the result before you send it.

Send

The Send step summarizes the audience size, who the newsletter is from, where replies go, and the subject.

Select Send test to send a test copy to your own email address only.
Choose Send immediately and select Send now, or choose Schedule for later, pick a time, and select Schedule. A scheduled time must be at least 35 minutes from now and no more than 72 hours ahead.

A scheduled newsletter can't be edited. To change it, find it on the Scheduled tab and select Cancel schedule on its row, then open it from the Drafts tab to edit it. It goes back to being a draft and the time you picked is kept so you can schedule it again. You can't cancel when it is too close to the send time: you see Too late to cancel, and the newsletter goes out as scheduled.

Personalization

Newsletters can't be personalized for each recipient. There are no merge fields or placeholders such as {{first_name}}: every recipient gets the same subject and body. Write a greeting that addresses the whole community instead, for example "Hello, community".

Manage your newsletters

The Newsletters page has four tabs:

Drafts: newsletters you haven't sent yet. Select one to keep editing, or Delete it.
Scheduled: newsletters waiting to go out, with the time they will be sent. Cancel schedule turns one back into a draft, unless it is too close to the send time.
Sent: newsletters that have gone out, with the number of recipients and the open rate.
Opt-out: people who unsubscribed from your newsletters, and when.

Select a newsletter on the Sent tab to open its analytics:

Recipients (delivered and failed), Unique opens, Total opens, and Open rate. When there is click data, also Unique clicks, Total clicks, Click rate, and Click-to-open rate.
Shares: how many times readers shared the newsletter with the Share button in LFX Self Serve, split by where they shared it (X, LinkedIn, Reddit, Email, or Copy link). Each person counts once per destination. Shares from the links inside the email itself aren't counted.
Opens over time, Clicks over time, and Top clicked links.
Recipient engagement: each recipient's delivery status, opens, and clicks. Filter by Opened, Clicked, Not opened, or Failed.

Select the failed count to open Failed deliveries, which lists the addresses that didn't receive the newsletter. Copy all copies them so you can check them.

Read the newsletters you receive

In the Me lens, select Newsletters in the sidebar. You see one card for each foundation where you are a member of a Newsletter group. The newsletters shown follow your group membership, so when you join a Newsletter group you can also read the newsletters it sent before you joined. A foundation whose Newsletter group hasn't sent anything yet still gets a card. Select View newsletters to see that foundation's newsletters, search them, and filter by project. Select a newsletter to read it.

To share a newsletter, open it and select Share, then pick X, LinkedIn, Reddit, or Email, or select Copy link. The button shows how many times the newsletter has been shared, for example Share · 12, and the Shares column on a foundation's newsletter list shows the same count. Each person counts once per destination, so sharing to LinkedIn twice counts once.

If you aren't a member of any Newsletter group, the page says "No newsletters yet". Join a foundation or project's Newsletter group to see its newsletters.

From a newsletter or a foundation card you can select Invite a colleague or Invite to invite a colleague to the foundation's newsletter. To send an invitation, you must be a member of the foundation's newsletter group and have a verified email at one of the member organizations named in the invite dialog. Your colleague's company email must also be at one of those member organizations.

If you open a link to a newsletter you can't read, you see a message such as Restricted Newsletter or This newsletter is a member benefit instead of the newsletter.

Mailing Lists FAQ: includes common questions about newsletters
Create a group: create the Newsletter group a newsletter is sent to
Mailing Lists: Groups.io mailing lists, which are separate from newsletters

Who can use Newsletters

Before you start: create a Newsletter group

Write and send a newsletter