Hi folks, please see the following message from Martha Katz-Hyman:
As you’ll read in the forthcoming Summer Bulletin, at this past June’s annual meeting, the ALHFAM Board approved the development of some kind of e-mail communication that will include ALHFAM news & information, news from the regions and the PIGS, information about ALHFAM regional & annual meetings, and information about other conferences, meetings, etc., that might be of interest to our members. Basic information about annual & regional meetings, as well as fellowships, will continue to appear in the Bulletin, but the “News from Other Pastures” and PIG & CORN news will be on the ALHFAM website & this new e-mail newsletter. We hope to launch this new newsletter when the Fall Bulletin is published. Those of you who belong to other professional organizations, or belong to community organization of any type, or run your own business, may already get this type of newsletter, or you may be the person who sends one out! I’ve gone looking at the various companies that offer this service, and the choice is mind-boggling! Therefore, I’m asking for suggestions as to what provider might work best for ALHFAM (fewer than 1,000 e-mail addresses; non-profit) in terms of ease of use in importing e-mail addresses, keeping track of bounce-backs, putting the e-mail together (e.g., inserting images, links, etc.), reliability, etc. The more specific your suggestions, the more helpful they will be! Thank you!
Martha Katz-Hyman Co-Chair, ALHFAM Publications/Communications Committee (revised name of the Committee, and Susan Reckseidler is co-chair, as she is responsible for the communications plank of the Strategic Plan: http://www.alhfam.org/pdfs/strategicplanjune122011.pdf)
ALHFAM 
For the Early American Industries Association, we put together the following (for around 3000 members):
1. PDF newsletter, housed on website.
2. Emailed announcement of new newsletter with link to downloadable PDF file
3. Bulk email is managed by Webdynamic LLC, which is owned by Jim Esten, an EAIA member and heavy duty tech guy. It’s fairly easy to setup a bulk mail service. Jim hosts the EAIA website and email service too. A separate email service could be setup, I suppose.
4. Newsletter is created by a paid employee, but could just as easily be created by anyone in Word, Pages or any DTP or WP program, then converted to PDF for distribution.
We decided to avoid an emailed newsletter as many recipients are on dialups, have security features to block html/images or similar problems.
http://jimesten.com/about-webdynamic-llc/
Gary Roberts
Thanks, Gary. We, too, have members with dial-up (though fewer and fewer), and so sending an e-mail with the link to the newsletter, rather than e-mailing it directly, might be the way to go.
Martha
thanks much for your input, Gary!
I checked with my webmaster, Rikki Nyman of Antique Home Style. She is also the webmaster for our Washington County Museum. Here are her comments: “The Museum uses Constant Contact and I have you set up at MailChimp. They are workable for non-profits and smaller organizations.
Email apps are kludgy though … they require a whip and a chair, and still turn out kind of homely. They are a separate beast from most other communications media. They seem to be inherently difficult to work with. I suspect that most of them function the same way. The only good solution requires more money than they probably want to spend and that would be to hire an email design person who does a LOT of it and then they could probably have a beautiful email.”
This might support the idea of having the newsletter available online, reached through a link in the email. I hope this helps.
Kay, thank you very much for your insight and for checking for us. I appreciate it!