Newsletter
The giving half of your newsletter, already written
Aurora builds a block out of the needs your widget is showing right now — email-safe HTML and a matching plain-text version. Paste it into whatever you already send, or, if you don't send anything yet, let Aurora send it for you.
What it writes
Generated from live data every time you open the screen, so nothing in it is a copy of something that has since changed.
- A card per need, with its photo, its price and a link that goes straight to giving
- Four layouts — one full-width hero, two across, three across, or a compact list — so it fits whatever your newsletter already looks like
- A picture on every card, because a need you have not photographed still gets one for its category
- Progress against the goal, where a need has one
- A line of what you finished recently, so the issue reports as well as asks
- A plain-text version written to match, carrying the same links in the same order
- Every link tagged, so the gifts it produces show up as having come from the newsletter
Pick the needs you want, pick a layout, and copy. The panel shows you the desktop and phone widths side by side before you leave the page, because the way this goes wrong is always the same way: three cards across looks fine on a laptop and unreadable on the device most of your list will open it on.
Aurora also carries the steps for the tool you are pasting into — where the code block is in Mailchimp, what Constant Contact strips, which layout to fall back to when an editor fights you.
Two ways to send it
If you already run a mailing list, paste the block — your list is bigger than the one Aurora knows about, and it always will be. If you don't, the second column is why this exists.
| Detail | Paste it yourself | Send it from Aurora |
|---|---|---|
| Who it reaches | Everyone on your mailing list, wherever that list already lives. | Everyone who has given to you through Aurora. Usually a smaller list, and never anyone else. |
| What you need first | An email tool you already send from, and consent you already have. | Nothing. No second account, no domain to verify, no import. |
| What Aurora can see | Nothing at all. The block is on your clipboard; your subscribers never touch Aurora. | Only the donor addresses it already recorded when those gifts came in. |
| Unsubscribes | Stay in your tool, which is where your subscribers expect to manage them. | One-click unsubscribe in every message, honoured on every send after it. |
| A long send | Your provider's problem, and they are good at it. | Goes out in batches and resumes where it stopped. Every address is claimed before the first message leaves, so a retry cannot mail anybody twice. |
Why it is built from the live widget
The block comes out of exactly the same data the widget serves, resolved by the same visibility rules, rather than from a separate list you would have to keep in step. That is not an implementation detail — it is the reason an email from you can never advertise a need that the page it links to has already retired, which is the most embarrassing thing a fundraising newsletter can do.
It also means the arithmetic agrees. A card that says a need is most of the way to its goal says so because the widget would say the same thing to a donor who clicked it that second.
Common questions
While you're here
Put your first need in front of a donor
Create your account and build a widget for free. Free — Aurora takes nothing from any gift, and we ask your donors for an optional contribution instead — or $0.99 an update, with your donors never asked.