Five times per year, beginning in the 2017–18 school year, D & O Creative Group has produced a newsletter for the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) that is customized for 50 state and territory school counselor associations (SCAs). We develop the editorial calendar themes well in advance and recruit writers to provide five theme articles or draw on ASCA’s content library for each issue. Recent themes have included: Stretch Your Comfort Zone, Career Readiness, and Racial Justice Starts at School. We then solicit state-specific materials from each SCA (and remind them about the deadlines), edit the provided materials, and upload all content to a specially designed interface. We create a template for the issue, including advertising that supports the project, customize the template for each of the 50 SCAs, and schedule two deliveries of the newsletter issue to the SCA’s member list.

Reading and editing the materials from the state leaders is uplifting and educational. I am always impressed by the dedication and hard work of school counselors to support every student across the United States. Throughout the year, I stay open to ideas for future themes and articles, drawing on journal articles, conference presentations, and ASCA magazine features.

View a sample newsletter email

View a sample newsletter issue

Challenge

The volume of work for each issue is significant. After preparing the five shared articles, we receive approximately 80 articles from the states, requiring editing, uploading, and writing a 260-character excerpt for each to appear in the emails. For every SCA’s email, the layout must be modified and each of the 5–7 articles requires three customized links. We check every link in every email. We also receive an email list from each SCA, which we then format and upload before scheduling. Editorial associate Donna Dangle is essential to this process, handling all article uploading and layout, customizing the email template for each SCA, scheduling the 100 mailings, and keeping an eye out for any incongruities throughout the process.

Comments from the States

“I want to take a moment and say thank you for all of your support. I appreciate your organization, reminders, and help whenever I have needed it.”

“Katy spearheads the [state] newsletters that go out to membership. She is great to work with and has a ton of resources should you need any support with content for your newsletters next year. Katy, thank you so much for all you’ve done to support me throughout this year with the newsletters. You and your team are AMAZING and a joy to work with!”

“It has been great working with you over the last couple of years! Thanks for all you do to help support communication and great resources to our membership!”