Hey there, I'm Devin!
Most of the time you can catch me deep in the world of internal comms at Workshop (yes, the Happy Mondays folks!), and while I love AI, there are just some comms questions that need a human who really gets it… that’s me!
Hi Devin! We are a volunteer-led charity delivering peer support, with over 500 volunteers and email as our main communication channel. At the moment, our internal comms are inconsistent – emails range from CEO updates and financial information to community news and volunteer stories, all landing in the same place. How can we introduce structure and clarity to our communications without losing the warmth and sense of community that’s so important in a peer-support model?
It may not seem like it right now, but this is actually a good problem to have. There are so many teams who don’t have enough content, buy-in, or even momentum for internal comms at all… and messages just don’t go out. So hopefully you can find a little comfort in knowing that it’s only up from here!
This is one of those moments where a little structure can go a long way — so everything doesn’t just blur together in the inbox.
That in mind, I think an editorial calendar is going to be a huge support here. And honestly, this shouldn’t just be something the comms person or team sees — it should be visible to the whole organization. If you’re not using an internal email tool like Workshop yet, you can totally build something lightweight in Asana or even Google Sheets (that share functionality is a major key!). The biggest thing is having clear placeholders: what the update is, who owns it, when it’s going out, and what “bucket” it falls into (CEO update, financial info, volunteer story, community news, etc.). From there, you can also add “no-send” dates or pre-load important moments you already know are coming.
Something else I’d suggest is centralizing these updates for your employees. Instead of having everything come through as separate emails, you could create one recurring newsletter with consistent sections for each type of content — and then comms becomes the “editor” who helps filter, shape, and tell the story. That way, you keep the warmth and community voice without asking volunteers to sort through five different tones in one inbox.
And the good news is: structure doesn’t have to mean “corporate.” In a peer-support model especially, a predictable cadence and clear sections actually make the human stories stand out more, not less.
