Newsletters for Birmingham Community Matters

Between 2018 and 2025 I worked with Birmingham Community Matters (BCM) - a charity that supports people to set up, run and grow small community organisations in Birmingham.

Every month I wrote BCM’s popular newsletter, sharing details of events, programmes, funding opportunities and resources to help people achieve their goals. Its mailing list grew to more than 1,200 people from the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector across Birmingham and the newsletter garnered high open rates (47.5 per cent in September 2024).

I always aimed for high accessibility standards, with clean formatting, easy-to-understand language and alt-text behind each relevant image. I tested each newsletter multiple times before sending it, and worked with colleagues to check links, accuracy and coherency. The newsletter earned BCM lots of lovely feedback.

“This is a wonderful little newsletter. It’s full of useful info with some lovely light bits too. Keeping it real for people and keeping it sane! That’s what people want” 
– a reply to BCM’s newsletter

“As well as developing our style guide, including tone of voice, [Marie] produced a monthly newsletter that was well read and well regarded and singlehandedly managed our social media channels, growing our audience and engagement year on year. We were often perceived as a charity that was larger than we were and I think that is in no small part down to Marie's diligent and dedicated work in making sure our information was relevant and useful and that our social media presence was responsive and connected”
- Jo Burrill, formerly CEO at Birmingham Community Matters
Read Jo’s full testimonial.