About the CampusGRID newsletter service

1. What are the main features of your newsletter service?
2. Many members of our community don't have email. Why should I use this email service?
3. Do I have to maintain the list of newsletter (email) subscribers?
4. What is the cost of this service?
5. Our school wants to email the newsletter to all parents in community, is this an option?
6. Does your service keep the old newsletters?
7. We need an internal staff newsletter. Can we use your service for that?
8. What makes a collaborative newsletter better?

About the CampusGRID newsletter service

1. What are the main features of your newsletters?
CampusGRID provides schools with the following newsletters benefits:

• Versatile - Creates three newsletter versions
  1. Online newsletter is automatically posted to your web site
  2. Email newsletter is automatically sent to members of your community
  3. Printed hard copy for handout or mailing.
• Online Convenience - Everything is accessed through your web browser. There is no software to install, configure or maintain.
• Collaborative - teachers, staff members, parents and students can all contribute news items directly through their browser.
• Fast - create and send out a complete newsletter in minutes.
• Automatic - the newsletter is instantly emailed to all subscribers and automatically posted to your web site, all with the click of a button!
• Easy to Use - Just follow the online instructions. Contributors have a few simple and easy-to-follow choices. Administrators have more flexibility and can custom configure their newsletter to fit their needs.
• Searchable - The newsletter is posted to your CampusGRID web site, so its contents as well as all archived newsletters means that it can searched with the built-in search engine on the site.
• Online Archives - When the newsletter is posted to your CampusGRID web site, the previous newsletter is placed into a searchable archive area which is viewable by all visitors. The site's search engine will search these archives as well as the current newsletter.

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2. Many members of our community don't have email. Why should I use this email newsletter service?
First of all, you would be surprised how many people have and use email. Its usage is more widespread than web browsing and according to IDC, it is still the fastest growing use of the internet (138% increase in volume per year). Usage is expected to triple in volume over the next five years. There are over 50 million households in the U.S. using email. So, sending your newsletter by email is both practical and forward-looking.
But even so, there will always be a certain percentage of your community who can not receive the newsletter by email. This is why we provide the following two additional methods for newsletter creation and distribution.

1. Online version — Automatic creation of a web page version of the newsletter and automatic posting to your web site. This feature makes the newsletter available to anyone with a web browser. Also previous newsletters are archived in case anyone did not receive their copy.
2. Print version for hard copy handout or mailing to families without email access. This multi-distribution solution ensures that more members of your community will read and use the newsletter.

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3. Do I have to maintain the list of newsletter (email) subscribers myself?
No. Each subscriber registers online and can change their email address or other information themselves. CampusGRID maintains the user database and provides convenient online forms for subscribers to edit their own information. You may also add or edit subscribers yourself. This would be usually be done to enter school staff who will then also receive the newsletter.
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4. What is the cost of this service?
The basic newsletter service is included with the CampusGRID web site. This includes creation of the online newsletter, automatic posting and archiving on your web site, internal staff newsletter, and full collaborative usage by your staff and school members.
There is one additional charge and this is to have the newsletter emailed to subscribers. There are two ways that can work:

1. Subscribers pay for their own subscription
   This approach doesn't cost the school anything and is optional for parents and other subscribers who may pay a low $9.95 per year fee to receive each copy of the newsletter by email.
2. School pays for subscriptions
   The charge for this is $1 per student per year and allows the school to add an unlimited number of email subscribers.

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5. Our school wants to email the newsletter to all parents in community, is this an option?
Yes, as noted in the previous answer, the school or other organization may pay a small annual fee of $1 per student per year which allows any and all parents, students, staff members and others to subscribe to the newsletter. This ensures that a maximum number of community members are kept informed about the school on a regular and consistent basis.
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6. Does your service keep the old newsletters?
Yes. All previous newsletters are automatically put into an archive which is kept on the school web site. The archives may be maintained and purged as necessary by you at your convenience. The archived editions are dated and listed on the site. They are automatically included in searches made through the CampusGRID search engine, so they are a valuable source of school information on the web site and serve to keep the web site more up-to-date and useful.
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7. We need an internal staff newsletter. Can we use this for that?
The newsletter provides a simple way to have internal staff newsletter. It uses the same service as the "external" public newsletter. However any item posted to the newsletter which is marked as "Staff News" will be sent only to staff members. All other news is included in the public newsletter which is sent to all subscribers.
This staff newsletter is included with the standard web site service.
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8. What makes a collaborative newsletter better?
Just as with a web site, the more people who contribute to the newsletter, the more informative it will be. But usually, it is hard for the newsletter administrator to collect newsletter items and to get them on time.
The CampusGRID service gives each staff member an online access from which they can post newsletter contributions. This service uses any web browser and requires no installed software, so members can contribute from anywhere, school or home. They can contribute new items, edit old items from their archives and contribute them again. They can even go back and edit or delete previous contributions.
The Newsletter administrator takes these various contributions and assembles them into a newsletter, does any final edits and with the click of a button sends it out.

It's that simple!
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