Editorial packaging · Newsletters

A different angle on mentorship

I managed story selection and editorial packaging for Stand Together’s flagship newsletter and its K-12 education edition. One mentorship story shows how I approached the reader’s reason to care.

My contribution

I managed story selection and editorial packaging for both: 4–5 stories a month for the flagship, 2 for K-12, covering sequencing, headlines, blurbs, subject lines, preheaders, and ICYMI curation. List management and send infrastructure belonged to the lifecycle team.

The framing decision

The November 18, 2025 flagship issue led with a foster-care mentorship story. I could have opened with the program: what the organization does and how mentors are matched. I opened instead on what the relationship might mean to the reader.

The issue recorded a 2.7% click rate against a 1.3% twelve-week average. The program-description version was never sent. The November 25 review also noted a second article on the same topic as a possible contributor, so the comparison does not isolate the effect of my copy.

Context

As of January 31, 2026, the two newsletters had 31,532 combined 60-day active subscribers (42,049 across all measured newsletter audiences). Their January open rates were 53.1% and 67.3%, respectively. These figures describe the audience I packaged for; list growth was outside my scope.