About

Randy Tyler is a recognized pioneer and expert in Online Volunteer program development. Since 1998, his work has been noted by numerous news sources from The New York Times to CTV's Canada AM, and shared with non-profit organizations through provincial, national and international conference presentations and published articles. Randy provides training, workshops, presentations and consultation for non-profit organizations. He is a Gold Medallist graduate of both the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba. For further information, please visit: http://www.RandyTyler.org

The following content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

         

Easily Keep Your Donors, Volunteers Informed with RSS to PDF, Kindle, ePub

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How to Easily Create PDF, Kindle, Mobipocket and ePub Formatted E-Newletters and E-Books for Your Online Volunteers, Onsite Volunteers, Employees, Board Members or Donors from an RSS Feed

Keeping your donors, employees, board and/or online volunteers informed via an e-newsletter can be time consuming. In fact, the time involved may be preventing you from developing such a communication tool. However, if you currently have a blog and/or subscribe to other interesting web-based content (as long as such content has an RSS Feed, such as your Twitter RSS Feed or a Google Search), such posts (content) can be easily and quickly re-purposed into a PDF-based newsletter or eBook format and e-mailed to your donors, board members, employees, onsite volunteers and/or online volunteers. Providing your RSS Feed content in Kindle/Mobipocket, ePub and PDF formats enables you to reach a wider audience, whether offline or online (wired or wireless), in a method most convenient and accessible to your targeted audience.

To easily create your PDF-based E-Newsletter (as well as Kindle/Mobipocket and ePub formats) using Zinepal's ( http://www.zinepal.com) free level of service , all you need to do is:

1. Create a free Zinepal account
2. Add your Blog's RSS Feed (or additional RSS Feeds if you want to add more content): to ascertain the URL of your Blog's RSS Feed (or the URL of any web-based content with an RSS Feed), place your cursor over the RSS icon (which is usually a square, orange graphic), right click and select "copy link location'"
3. Select Content: using the checkboxes, select the relevant content you want to provide to your target audience (whether they be your online volunteers, onsite volunteers, board members, employees and/or donors)
4. Customize and Create your Zine (PDF-based E-Newsletter) Using the Zinepal Tabs:

  • Name Your PDF E-Newsletter: give your Zine an interesting, attention-getting title
  • Order and/or Remove Your Items: if you want to change the order of your content, just drag and drop your items (at this point, you can also delete any item from your PDF based e-newsletter by clicking the "Remove" button next to the specific item
  • Delivery Tab: select the "Delivery" tab if you want to make your zine public or have your zine e-mailed to you
  • Keywords and Introduction Tab: if you choose to allow your zine to be shared publicly, add the appropriate keywords so others can easily find your zine; add an introduction (which will be automatically placed at the beginning of your PDF-based e-newsletter)
  • Logo and formatting Tab: Using Zinepal's free service, you cannot add a logo but you can choose your zine's  title, story and text font; under this same tab, you also have the option to hide your zine title, hide your story sources, hide the default page header and/or hide your story authors and dates
  • Preview: click the preview button to see what your formatted PDF e-newsletter will look like
  • Create: if you are satisfied with the preview, click the "Create" button, which will create a two column PDF-based e-newsletter from your RSS Feed's content (you also have the option to download your e-newsletter in Kindle/Mobipocket and ePub formats).
Thus, by selecting content for your target audience, different PDF, Kindle, Mobipocket and/or ePub formatted e-newsletters can be quickly and easily created with Zinepal. To see an example of a Zinepal created PDF-based e-newsletter I quickly created, download the linked PDF. Although Zinepal has just introduced (November 2009) a "Pro" (paid) level of service, the free feature set still remains. There is a comparison of the free and the pro accounts posted at http://www.zinepal.com/pro.

For further information about how a non profit organization can develop a productive virtual volunteering program through the use of technology, please visit this Online Volunteering Resource.

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Tags   E-Newsletter   ePub   Fundraising   Kindle   Mobipocket   NGO   Non Profit   Non Profit Tech   NPTech   Online Volunteering   Randy Tyler   RSS2PDF Newsletter   Zinepal