How to Make an Announcement

Any announcements and events sponsored by UUCPA may be publicized in multiple ways: on the website, in the Weekly Update email, in the order of service, on our Meetup and Facebook pages, on our Twitter feed, on our Instagram feed, via various email lists (including Announce), from the pulpit on Sunday morning, and on various sites that are not explicitly connected to UUCPA, such as Palo Alto Online and the Peace and Justice Center Community Calendar. In the past, to reach most of these listing, you have had to send your announcement to multiple email addresses.

Single-Step Process

Now, you may publicize your event or announcement in a simple, one-stop way, by emailing the information to publicity@uucpa.org. Our office administrative staff, and other stakeholders receive this information and can assist you if you have questions. publicity@uucpa.org should also be informed if any of your information changes so that we can send corrections. Cancellations and corrections can also be emailed to publicity@uucpa.org directly.

Even if you know the individual email address or alias of the person who is handling the publicity outlet you want to reach, please use publicity@uucpa.org. Multiple stakeholders watch publicity and bypassing it disturbs the process we are trying to follow. If you feel that you must email another specific address, please at least cc publicity@uucpa.org so that others will be notified.

When sending your publicity request via email to publicity@uucpa.org, please include the following information:

Title
Descriptive Text
One-sentence Descriptive Text (if you wish to have a pulpit announcement)
If this is an event:
- Location (confirm space with Jeff, 650-494-0541 x21)
- Date (if repeating event, please give details in COMMENTS / QUESTIONS / REQUESTS below)
- Start Time
- Duration
Is this a volunteer opportunity? Yes/No
Contact Person (to include in the announcement)
- No personal email or telephone numbers will be posted on announcements. If you are sending an announcement on behalf of a group, you can use your <group>+owner@uucpa.org (for example audio-committee+owner@uucpa.org) email address as a contact. If you aren’t sending on behalf of a group contact email-help@uucpa.org and we’ll help you figure out a good alternative.
Contact Information (for office use only; not for publication)

Optionally, indicate where to publicize (one or more of the following):

If you don’t specify otherwise, the information will be published in the following places. If you already sent it to announce, but want it included in the weekly update, please specify that in your email:
- via the announce@uucpa.org email list (or other announcement-style email lists)
- the Weekly Update email
- the website: www.uucpa.org
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Twitter
Additional options include:
- the Order of Service
- a pulpit announcement – there is a strict limit on the number of pulpit announcements and a strict set of priorities, but we will make the announcement if time permits

If you have a photo or graphic you wish included, we will send it to all permitted outlets. Please e-mail it to publicity@uucpa.org, and affirm:

The photo was taken, or the graphic was created, by me.
The photo or graphic is open source/public domain (give credit information in COMMENTS / QUESTIONS / REQUESTS section)

Some useful things to know:

The Weekly Update Email

The Weekly Update email newsletter deadline is Friday at 5 pm for the next day’s update email.

UUCPA events and announcements about UUCPA are eligible for the Weekly Update.
The weekly update announcements usually include a featured image and an excerpt of the text of the announcement with a link to read more on the website. We recommend that the most important information of the announcement be included in the first 2 sentences to capture reader’s attention.
Events for the coming week (Saturday through Saturday) are automatically included from the web calendar. Please visit the web calendar to ensure that your event is listed properly.

The Web Site

All announcements sent to the publicity@uucpa.org will be displayed on the web site.
Announcements will be displayed or linked to the Events or the News page.
No personal email or telephone numbers will be posted on announcements.
If you are sending an announcement on behalf of a group, you can use your <group>+owner@uucpa.org (for example: audio-committee+owner@uucpa.org) email address as contact. If you aren’t sending on behalf of a group contact email-help@uucpa.org and we’ll help you figure out a good alternative.
The photo policies are printed on the publicity form. Photos that comply with the policies will be published.
Use of the text as submitted or use of the photograph or graphic is at the discretion of the Web Manager. You are promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!
The Web site is updated weekly.

Use the One-Stop process (email to publicity@uucpa.org) or email the Web Manager.

Group Email Lists: Announce, etc

Announce is the group email list for Church-wide announcements.

CRE Parents is the group email list for events related to children and families.

Pulpit Announcements (Sunday morning)

The deadline for Sunday pulpit announcements is the prior Friday at 5 pm.

In order to keep the Sunday service from starting with too many minutes of community announcements, causing eyes to glaze over and services to run late, several years ago the Sunday Morning Committee wisely set the limit at three spoken announcements. If there are more than three requests, priority goes to announcements that concern UUCPA activities, UUCPA fundraising, and/or social justice. They are each one sentence long. Send these types of announcements to publicity@uucpa.org and specific that you want this to be a pulpit announcement.