Four gives before one ask

A 14-day welcome sequence for a non-religious nonprofit. Every example is Larkfield Food Rescue, a fictional food-rescue organization. Swap every name, number, and placeholder for your own.

What is in this packet

File	What it is
00-read-me-first.html	This guide.
01-day0-first-story.html	Day 0 email. Delivers the first field story inside the email.
02-day2-why-you-joined.html	Day 2 email. Asks for a one-line reply, answered by a named person.
03-day5-choose-topics.html	Day 5 email. Lets the reader choose topics, framed as receiving less.
04-day9-free-tool.html	Day 9 email. A free printable guide that lives outside the inbox.
05-day14-give.html	Day 14 email. The first and only ask, tied to one impact unit.
story-day-template.html	Reusable email for story days 1 to 6.
seven-day-story-planner.html	Printable one-page planner: seven rows, a collection checklist, and the consent line.

The timeline

Five structural emails on days 0, 2, 5, 9, and 14. A seven-day story series (days 0 to 6) runs underneath them: one short true story every morning, written in the first person by one named staff member (Maya Okafor, route coordinator) and signed with her name and role. Four gives, then one ask.

Day	Email	The job it does	Call to action
0	Your first story from the field	Pays off the signup inside the email, states the cadence in the first sentence, and offers the daily-or-weekly choice.	Read the full story
1 to 6	Day [n]: [story_title]	One first-person note from Maya each morning. Builds the habit of opening.	Read the full story
2	Why did you sign up?	Turns a one-way list into a conversation with a named person.	Tell us in one line
5	What do you want to hear about?	Hands over the controls before anyone reaches for unsubscribe.	Choose my topics
9	A free tool for your kitchen	Gives something useful that lives on a fridge door, not in an inbox.	Get the free guide
14	What your gift actually does	Names the bargain, shows two voices from the field, ties the gift to one unit.	Give a gift today

After day 14, the weekly story continues. The next ask waits at least three weeks.

The swap table

This packet was adapted from a faith-based welcome sequence. Each part of the original has a secular equivalent that does the same job.

In the faith-based original	Secular equivalent in this packet
A daily reading or reflection, one every morning	A seven-day series of first-person notes from the field, one every morning, all from one named staff member
A form to send in a personal request for support	A one-line reply about why you joined, read and answered by a named person
Teaching topics to choose from	Program topics to choose from (pantries, sources, numbers, policy, stories)
A free app with the organization's content	A free, concrete tool tied to why people signed up: the Larkfield Leftovers Guide, 12 ways to keep a week's groceries out of the bin
Testimonies from members about what changed in their lives	Two short quotes from the field (a pantry coordinator and a family who used the pantry), bridged with one person first, then the group: “Marisol’s pantry is one of 31 we stock”
“Someone paid for this to reach them”	One specific impact unit: $25 covers one morning van route, about 400 meals recovered

Six craft rules the templates follow

One call to action per email. One button, one destination. A second link in the body competes with the first. The one exception is the daily-or-weekly choice in email 1, which is a consent control, not a call to action.
Live-text buttons. Text on a colored table cell, 44px tall, never an image. It renders with images off and it reads aloud.
Preference link before unsubscribe. “Choose what email you get from us” sits first in every footer, so people can receive less instead of leaving.
No empty first-name token. The greeting is a plain “Hello,” because a signup form rarely collects a name, and “Hi ,” costs more trust than a name earns.
Choices in the email. The five topics and the story itself are inside the email. The reader decides before clicking, and the click only confirms.
Effort expectation beside every button. “About a minute.” “About thirty seconds.” Say how long it takes, every time.

One rule about voice sits above all six. Every email and every story comes from ONE named staff member, written in the first person in plain language, and signed with a name and a role. In the tests this packet is built on, personal notes from one person on a plain layout moved more gifts than polished third-person copy. Resist the urge to rewrite Maya into marketing prose.

Two checks before you ship

1. Preferences must change sends. Do not send the day 5 email until each topic in it is wired to a segment your platform actually uses. Choose a topic on a test account, wait a day, and confirm the other topics stopped arriving.

2. Authenticate the sending domain. Publish SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for the domain in your From address before the first send. Send a test to a Gmail and an Outlook address and check that all three show as passing in the message headers.

How to use these files

Open each .html file in a browser to preview it.
Paste the body into your email platform's HTML editor (most accept the full file; some want only what is inside <body>).
Replace every [placeholder]: [story_url], [reply_form_url], [preference_center_url], [tool_url], [donate_url], [unsubscribe_url], [postal_address], [website_url], [organization_legal_name], and the story fields in the template. Your platform may use its own merge syntax for the unsubscribe and preference links.
Replace Larkfield Food Rescue, Maya Okafor, and every story, name, and number with your own. Keep one named writer for the whole sequence. The planner shows what to collect.
Send yourself a test and read it on a phone before it goes to anyone else.

If you add a banner image, use one image at 600px wide with descriptive alt text that says what is in the picture, not the organization's name.