Every week, a few dozen events land in the community calendar queue: a library story hour, a church rummage sale, a high school band fundraiser, a neighborhood meeting about a crosswalk. Most are posted within a couple of days. A handful aren't, and nearly every time it comes down to one missing detail. This guide covers what the form asks for, how the calendar actually gets built each week, and how to keep your listing out of the rejection pile.
What belongs on the community calendar
The calendar exists for things the public can show up to. That includes nonprofit and civic events, free or low-cost programming, volunteer drives, school and library events, support groups, senior center activities, and municipal meetings. If a neighbor could reasonably attend, it probably fits.
What we don't run: retail promotions, ticket resales, private parties, recruitment pitches, and anything whose main purpose is selling a product or service. Candidate forums and campaign events go to the news desk instead, where they're handled as news rather than listings.
Unsure which side of that line your event falls on? Submit it and say so in the description. We would rather answer a question than have you assume the answer is no.
The details every listing needs
The submission form is short, but a few fields do the heavy lifting. Leave one blank and the listing usually stalls.
Required
- Title. Plain and specific. "Spaghetti Dinner to Benefit the Elmwood Food Pantry" tells a reader everything. "YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS!!!" tells them nothing and reads like an ad.
- Date and time. Include a start and an end. "Saturday, March 8, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m." If the event repeats, say so and give the final date in the series.
- Location. Venue name, street address, and the room if the building is large. "Community Center" is not enough; "Community Center, 2nd floor meeting room" saves people a lap around the hallway.
- Cost. Even when the answer is free, write "free." If there's a suggested donation, say that and give the amount or note that any amount helps.
- Description. Two or three sentences. What happens, who it's for, and whether anyone needs to register ahead of time.
- Contact. A name plus a phone number or email a reader can actually reach. This is also how we verify a listing before it goes live.
Worth adding
Accessibility notes, parking information, whether kids are welcome, and whether food is served. A listing that mentions a step-free entrance or an interpreter gets fewer phone calls and more attendees. If you're collecting donations of specific items, name them—"gently used winter coats, sizes child through adult" beats "donations appreciated."
Deadlines: send it early, not the night before
Listings are posted on a rolling basis, so there's no single cutoff for the web calendar. The weekly events roundup in the newsletter is a different story: it's assembled Thursday at noon and goes out Monday morning. Anything submitted after Thursday noon waits a week.
As a working rule, send your event at least ten days ahead, and two weeks if you want it in the newsletter. If your event requires registration, add another week on top—readers need time to decide, and you need time to prepare.
A listing submitted the day before may still make it onto the website. It won't make the newsletter, and most people plan their weekends earlier than that, so the room may be quieter than you'd like.
Why submissions get declined
Almost every rejection comes from the same short list of problems. None of them are permanent, and all of them are fixable in a few minutes.
- No cost listed. Many readers filter the calendar for free events. A blank cost field means the listing can't be sorted or displayed correctly.
- All-caps titles and stacked punctuation. We trim them, and occasionally the whole submission starts to look like a commercial ad rather than a community event.
- A flyer screenshot instead of typed details. We can't copy text out of an image, and screen readers can't read it either. Send the flyer as a photo if you like, but type the details into the form.
- No contact information. We can't verify a listing we can't trace to a person.
- Vague dates. "Next Saturday" or "second Tuesday" without a month is not something a reader can put on a kitchen calendar.
- Duplicate submissions. Sending the same event three times doesn't speed anything up. It just creates three entries for an editor to merge.
- Commercial framing. Phrases like "limited-time offer," "buy tickets now," or tiered pricing move an event out of calendar territory.
- No venue, or a venue listed as TBD. If the room isn't confirmed yet, tell us that in the description and we'll note it while you wait.
When a listing is declined, the note we send back usually names the missing piece. Fix that one field and resubmit; second versions frequently go up the same day.
Formatting rules that keep nonprofit listings clean
The calendar is a shared space, and consistent formatting is what makes it scannable. A few conventions the editors apply across every listing, nonprofit or otherwise:
- Use sentence case in titles, not all caps.
- Write dates in full: "Tuesday, April 15," not "4/15."
- Use lowercase "a.m." and "p.m." with periods, and always include an end time.
- Write "free" plainly. Exclamation points don't make an event more free.
- Keep titles under about 60 characters so they don't wrap awkwardly on a phone.
- Send photos in landscape orientation when possible; images at roughly 800 pixels wide or larger reproduce well, and portrait phone shots tend to get cropped.
- Write out web addresses in full. Shortened links get caught by spam filters and delay the post.
Recurring events, series, and corrections
For anything that runs more than once—a monthly book club, a six-week art class, a season of concerts—submit it once and describe the pattern, including the last date. You don't need a new submission each week.
If a date or time changes, use the update form or reply to your confirmation email rather than filing a fresh listing. Both preserve the original post and its place in the newsletter. And if we get something wrong—a mistyped time, the wrong room—tell us. Corrections are quick, and we would much rather fix a listing than leave bad information online where people are making plans from it.
A two-minute check before you hit submit
Read your own submission the way a stranger would, then run through this: Is the title specific? Is there a full date with a start and end time? Is the address complete enough to find without a search? Did you write an actual cost, even if it's zero? Is there a phone number or email someone will answer? And is the date at least ten days out?
If all of those are yes, you're done. If one is shaky, fix it now—it's faster than a back-and-forth email later. The calendar works because a lot of people take two minutes to get the details right.
Photo: Dane Cardiel / Pexels
