If people in your community regularly say ‘I didn’t know that was happening’ – that is not a communication volume problem. You are probably already sending emails, posting on social media, and updating your website. The problem is that none of those channels are reliably reaching people at the moment they are ready to engage with them.
There is a specific frustration that anyone running events for a school, venue, community organisation, or NPO will recognise: you put on a good event, you communicated it through your usual channels, and afterwards someone tells you they had no idea it was happening.
Sometimes it is one person. Often it is several. Occasionally it is someone who would have been exactly the right person to attend – a parent whose child would have loved it, a regular member who would have brought a friend, a new community member who is still finding out what you do.
The instinctive response is to communicate more. Send another email. Post again. Make the announcement louder. But if the communication is already happening and people are still missing events, more of the same rarely fixes it. The problem is not volume. It is architecture.
Why events get missed even when you are communicating
Most organisations running regular events use several channels simultaneously – a website, an email newsletter, social media, perhaps printed notices or a noticeboard. Each channel reaches a different subset of the audience at different times. In theory, using multiple channels should mean more people are reached. In practice, it creates three specific problems.
Problem 1: The information exists in multiple places but none of them are authoritative
When an event is listed on the website, mentioned in an email, and posted to Facebook, a community member checking any one of those places sees one version of the event. But which version is current? If the date changes after the email was sent, the email is wrong. If the website was updated but the Facebook post was not, they contradict each other. If the noticeboard has not been updated since last month, it shows events that have already passed.
The result is that people learn not to fully trust any single channel. They may check the website and see an event listed, but wonder if the time is still correct. The information exists – it is just not reliable.
Problem 2: Channels reach people at the wrong moment
An email newsletter reaches people when they open it – which may be on the day it is sent, or three days later, or not at all. A social media post reaches people when the algorithm serves it, which is typically within hours of posting and then rarely again. A printed newsletter reaches people when they pick it up and read it, which might be weeks after it was distributed.
Events, by their nature, need to be discovered by people before the event happens and at a moment when they are receptive to the information. A parent who opens an email the morning after a school event already happened is not going to find the information useful. The channel worked – the message was delivered – but the timing made it useless.
Problem 3: The effort required to keep all channels current means some are always out of date
Updating multiple channels independently takes time. For an organisation without dedicated communications staff – which is most schools, most small venues, most NPOs – that time comes from the same person who is also organising the events, managing the venue, and handling everything else.
When something has to give, communications maintenance is often what slips. The website events page falls behind by a week. The newsletter goes out late or not at all. The noticeboard is not updated until someone notices it showing old information. None of these failures are the result of not caring – they are the predictable result of asking one person to maintain multiple independent systems simultaneously.
The architecture problem explained
These three problems share a common root: the channels are not connected to each other or to a single authoritative source. They are maintained independently, which means they can only be as current as the last time someone manually updated each one.
This is an architecture problem, not a motivation problem or a resource problem. Giving someone more time to update five separate channels does not fix the underlying issue – it just delays when the channels next fall out of sync.
The fix is not more effort applied to the existing architecture. It is a different architecture: one source of truth that all channels either read from directly or point back to.
What the alternative looks like
The organisations that consistently reach their audience before events happen tend to share a common pattern, even if they have arrived at it in different ways. They manage events in one place – usually something as simple as Google Calendar, which their team already uses – and they have connected that place to their communication channels so that updates flow automatically.
When an event is added to the calendar, it appears on the website within minutes. When the date changes, it changes everywhere simultaneously. When an event is cancelled, it disappears from all channels at once. The person managing events updates one system. The communication takes care of itself.
This is not a complicated or expensive setup. It does not require a dedicated communications team or enterprise software. The tools most organisations need are already available – they just need to be connected correctly.
The website as the reliable destination
The most important single change most organisations can make is to ensure their website events page is always current and to make it the destination they point all other channels to. A website page that updates automatically from the calendar – via a connected widget that reads from Google Calendar – is always the most recent version of the event information. When the email links here, when the QR code on the poster links here, when the social post links here, the audience always arrives at current information regardless of when any of those channels was last updated.
The email newsletter as a regular signal, not a complete announcement
One of the most common communication mistakes is treating the email newsletter as the primary information delivery mechanism – writing out full event details in the email body and expecting subscribers to remember them until the event happens. Email is read once, at a single point in time, and then either deleted or archived.
A more effective use of email is as a regular signal that prompts subscribers to visit the website: ‘Here is what is coming up this week – see the full programme here‘. The email creates awareness. The website provides the current details. This means subscribers always see accurate information when they click through, even if the newsletter was sent before a detail changed.
Printed materials as permanent links, not information carriers
Printed posters and newsletters have a fixed information problem: whatever they say when printed is what they say forever, even if the event changes. The solution is not to stop using print – it is to change what printed materials are asked to do. A poster that says ‘Scan for upcoming events’ and shows a QR code linking to your website events page is always current. A poster that lists event details becomes outdated the moment anything changes.
QR codes on printed materials solve the fixed information problem: the code links to the website, which updates automatically. The poster does not need to be reprinted when an event changes. The audience scans the code and sees what is actually happening.
A practical checklist for fixing event communication
The changes that make the biggest difference are structural rather than tactical. Here is the sequence that works for most organisations:
- Choose one place to manage all event information – Google Calendar is the most practical choice for most organisations because it is already in use, supports multiple editors, and updates in real time across devices.
- Connect that source to your website so events appear automatically. A widget that reads from Google Calendar and embeds on your website page removes the manual update step entirely.
- Make your website events page the destination for all other channels. Email links, QR codes, social posts, and internal communications should all point here rather than to separate destinations.
- Send a regular brief newsletter that points to the website rather than trying to carry all event information itself. The newsletter creates the habit of checking. The website provides the current details.
- Replace information-heavy printed materials with QR codes linking to the website. Posters and flyers point people to current information rather than carrying a snapshot that may become outdated.
- Remove or stop updating channels you cannot maintain reliably. A Facebook page last updated three months ago is not helping – it is creating confusion. Fewer current channels serve your audience better than more outdated ones.
What this looks like in practice
A community sports club runs weekly training sessions and monthly events – tournaments, social evenings, fundraisers. Previously: events were posted to the website, mentioned in a monthly email, and announced on Facebook. All three were managed independently. The website was updated by one volunteer. The email was sent by another. The Facebook page was handled by a third person when they had time.
The result was chronic inconsistency. Members would arrive for a session that had been moved. New members would miss the first month of events because nobody had told them to check the website specifically. The committee knew communication was a problem but adding more channels had not helped.
After restructuring: events are managed in a shared Google Calendar that all three volunteers can update. A Revisual widget on the website pulls from that calendar and displays events automatically. The monthly email links to the website events page rather than listing events in full. QR codes on the clubhouse noticeboard link to the same page. When a session is cancelled or rescheduled, any volunteer updates the calendar once. The website, the email link destination, and the QR code all reflect the change immediately.
Members now have one reliable place to check. The question ‘is training still on this week?’ has an answer they can find themselves. The committee spends less time fielding individual enquiries about event details.
Social media algorithms show posts to a fraction of your followers and primarily within hours of posting. Someone who checks Facebook two days after your post may never see it. Social media works well for creating awareness in the short window after posting, but it is unreliable as a sole communication channel for events that need to reach people over days or weeks. The fix is to use social media to point people to a reliable destination – your website events page – rather than relying on the post itself to carry all the information.
The most reliable way to keep channels consistent is to connect them to a single source rather than updating them independently. If your website, email, and printed materials all point to one page that updates automatically from your calendar, consistency becomes a structural property rather than something that requires ongoing effort to maintain. Changes in the calendar propagate to all connected channels automatically – there is no manual synchronisation step.
Making your website events page authoritative and automatically updated is the highest-impact single change for most organisations. Once the website is always current, all other channels become pointers to it rather than independent sources of information. This one structural change – connecting Google Calendar to an auto-updating website widget – removes the inconsistency that causes most of the ‘I didn’t know that was happening’ problem.
As many as you can keep reliably current – and no more. Three channels that are always up to date serve your audience better than six channels where two are regularly outdated. The priority is reliability and consistency, not coverage. Once you have a single authoritative source connected to your website, adding additional channels becomes easier because they only need to point to that one destination rather than carrying information independently.
Both serve different purposes and reach different people at different moments. Email reaches subscribers directly but only when they open it. Social media reaches people passively but inconsistently due to algorithmic filtering. Neither is sufficient on its own as the primary information source for events. The most effective approach uses email and social media to create awareness and direct people to your website, where the current and complete event information lives. The website is the primary channel; email and social are signals that drive people to it.
About the author
Piotr Pozniak
Piotr’s is the cofounder of Revisual, a dedicated tool for seamlessly sharing events. With over six years of experience developing the platform, he brings extensive expertise in streamlining business processes through technology solutions. Work with partners across industries has honed his ability to optimize event workflows and enhance data accessibility.
