Dear Prairie to Pine newsletter readers and sharers,

We know we send you a lot of material every single week through our Regional newsletter. The newsletters team has appreciated your ideas for improvement that have been shared in our survey and in personal conversations. Every week is a balancing act of content, length, and interests as we live into being a Regional Council together. Your continued helpful feedback is very welcome.

Based on commitments about length and accessibility, we will be introducing a change starting November 2. Local events, local items for sale, and locally-focused job postings will no longer be included in the newsletter.

The Prairie to Pine newsletter covers all of Manitoba, and Ontario up to the time change line. It has a closed list of about 1,000 subscribers that anyone can join, and readers live all over the Region. We try to keep its content relevant for all readers. Local events, sales, or job postings don’t meet that need. Now that more in-person events are resuming, we have had to re-think our approach.

Since most job postings and events we receive are Winnipeg-based, it’s also best if Winnipeg ministries develop contact lists and social media that will allow good, effective local promotion. In fact, a Winnipeg Cluster or Clusters would be very welcome, and there’s funding and support available to help that happen.

Some specifics and some other options for you:

Job postings

Job postings are too numerous for us to include, and local and provincial websites and social media should be used instead. These will be much more effective at getting the word out anyway, since our newsletter is sent only to a specific list of subscribers.

Events and calendar

Local events are defined as in-person, short-term events that are unlikely to be a specific destination for those living more than an hour away; or online events that assume a local audience or address local concerns.

However: we have another, better option for you! Local events can be submitted to our website local events calendar: Here is the calendar, and here is the submission form for your events.

By using this calendar, everyone, including people not subscribed to the closed newsletter list, can see your event. And as a bonus, it gives you a public link you can use on any social media or in emails. Please have full event details ready to include in the form, along with a copyright-cleared landscape photo, as a featured photo makes your event stand out. And please don’t wait until the last minute to post events. Staff need to approve events in order to block the spammers who also use our calendar.

What events can go in the newsletter?

Public online events intended for a broad audience (eg, a special worship service, or a training or workshop that falls within the program work of the Regional Council and would be of interest to people across the provinces we serve). Or, in-person events that are open to the public, would draw in people who live at least an hour’s drive away, are at least a half day long, and are offered by United Church ministries or partners. That might sound picky, but in our new online events era, there are many, many events sent to us each week, and we need to be mindful of newsletter length.

Thank you for your support and understanding,

the Prairie to Pine Weekly News team