Civic RoundUp: Turning RSS Feeds into Resident‑Ready Newsletters with a Custom GPT

Why I Built Civic RoundUp (and How You Can Too)

Keeping residents informed is non-negotiable, but manually curating content from our website consumes hours of staff time each week.  To solve this problem, I have been exploring ways AI might assist with the time-consuming process of gathering content and bundling it up into a single newsletter, without adding additional people, time, or resources.

In most cities and towns, communications isn't its own dedicated department; it's an extra duty tacked onto already busy roles. With news, agendas, event notices, and alerts scattered across the website by different teams, delivering one clear, consistent message to residents quickly becomes a scramble. Below are a few key pain points:

• Content scattered everywhere. Different departments post news, events, and alerts in separate corners of the site, and pulling them into a single newsletter is a time‑consuming scavenger hunt.
• Process breaks when people rotate. If your communications lead takes vacation or a new hire jumps in, the absence of a standardized, repeatable workflow means newsletters get skipped or lose their consistent look and voice.
• No dedicated communications team. In many towns and small cities, the “communications office” is really an administrative assistant wearing yet another hat. Any solution must plug into the tools they already use and save time, not add cost or complexity.

Automating your weekly newsletter shouldn’t require a new vendor or a stack of scripts. With a Custom GPT and the CivicPlus RSS feeds you already own, you can turn a weekly slog into a one‑click workflow.

A Quick‑Win Solution: Civic RoundUp GPT

Civic RoundUp is a Custom GPT built with OpenAI that grabs up to five RSS feeds, blends the highlights, and spits out a ready‑to‑send newsletter—header, summaries, event table, calls to action (CTAs), the works. It’s built on the same prompts you’ll find below, so you can copy, paste, and launch your own in minutes.

What Civic RoundUp Does at a Glance

• Fetches feeds automatically. Enter your CivicPlus RSS URLs—or click Generate Civic RoundUp Sample for a demo.
• Writes like a human. Friendly civic tone, short paragraphs, scannable headings.
• Generates in one click. The GPT instantly produces a clean markdown that you can paste into any channel your team uses.

Civic RoundUp is a quick proof‑of‑concept, not enterprise software, so you can use the prompts here to shape a version that fits your city: edit wording, swap sections, or add new feeds—no coding required.

Give Civic RoundUp a spin, then copy the prompts and make it your own. I can’t wait to see the creative ways you tailor it for your community! 🚀

Try Before You Build

Not ready (or allowed) to create your own GPT yet? No worries. You’ll need to be signed into ChatGPT, but a free account will work. Nothing here costs extra unless you build your own GPT later, which requires ChatGPT Plus or higher subscription.

Open Civic RoundUp in the GPT Store and click Generate a Civic RoundUp Sample. Authorize the RSS2JSON connection and, in seconds, you’ll see a sample newsletter created. Copy it into your usual platform. You can click the Generate Your Custom RoundUp and drop in your own RSS feed URLs to preview how your city’s newsletter will look. Use it as‑is or return later to build a custom version when ready.

Build Your Own Civic RoundUp

Time required: about 15 to 30  minutes (plus coffee‑reheat time).

Before we dive in, here's a quick visual of how the process works.

Now, let's get started with the five-step process. You got this!

1. Gather Your RSS Feeds

If your site uses CivicPlus, all of your RSS links live at:

https://your‑site/rss.aspx

Open that page and copy the feeds you care about—news, calendars, job posts, alerts. You will paste them into the Custom GPT Instructions linked below. Simply replace the placeholders for https://your-site/RSSFeed in the template. You can also change the section names to match your style. Add or remove as many feeds as needed.

Please note that if you rely on third‑party tools for things like agendas, jobs, etc., you’ll need to find their RSS links or connect via their API, which is outside the scope of this quick start.

2. Begin Building Your Custom GPT

The prompt pack contains the custom instructions and action code you need for this GPT. You will update the templates, then copy and paste as outlined below.

• Download the Custom Instruction and Action Code templates and save them to your local drive.
• If you haven't done this yet, replace the RSSFeed placeholders in the Custom Instruction template with your RSS URLs. You can change the section names to match your style. Add or remove as many feeds as desired.
• Open ChatGPT.
• Click Explore GPTs.
• Select Create (or jump straight to the editor with this shortcut: https://chatgpt.com/gpts/editor). 
• Enter the name and description for your Custom GPT. You should also add an image, or the GPT might fail to save. You can upload your own or have DALL-E create one for you. It will use the information it has to create it, so I typically do this after I get some data entered.
• Copy and paste the prompt from your instruction template into the Instructions box.
• Below the instructions box, enter the following conversation starters:
  • Generate Your Custom RoundUp
  • Generate a Civic RoundUp Sample
• You can skip the Knowledge section for this tutorial. However, I recommend leaving Web Search, Canvas, and Image Generation checked in case you decide to use them later.
• Before creating a New Action, you will need to get an API key. You can do this in another browser tab in the next step.

3. Get Your Free RSS Feed API Key

• Go to rss2json.com and click Sign Up.
• Create your free account (no credit card required).
• Once logged in, go to your Account Dashboard.
• Navigate to the API tab, or visit this direct link: https://rss2json.com/me/api_key.
• Copy your personal API key.
• Paste this key in the Action Code template where you see YOUR_RSS2JSON_API_KEY. Replace it completely. It will look something like:
  
  default: eeqrkzghtelgbdwllryf7qo2vjwlhcea3wsyashs
• Copy the entire code and move to the next step.

4. Set Up Your GPT Action

• Go back to your Custom GPT and click the Create New Action button.
• Leave Authentication as "None"
• Paste your Action Code from the template into the Schema box.
• Click the Format button at the bottom right to help clean up any weird spacing that might have occurred during the cut/paste.
• Under the Schema box, you will see a new TEST button listed in the available actions section. You can test to make sure things are working correctly.
• You must enter a URL to your privacy policy if you publish your GPT.
• Click the < arrow next to the Add Actions title to return to your GPT.

5. Publish, Test, and Tweak

At this point, I recommend saving your GPT privately so you don't lose any work. You will see a Share GPT screen pop up, and you can safely click Update to keep it private. From here, you can either view the GPT to see how it will work or click the X to return to the preview mode.

Keep testing and feel free to change the custom instructions to match your brand or preferred style better. Once you are done testing, you can update the GPT again or change the share settings. When you’re happy, make the GPT public and unlisted so your team can use it. Or keep it as your personal sidekick. Whatever works for you. There are more steps to take if you decide to publish to the GPT store, but I'll let you explore that on your own. 😃

Optional Next Steps

• Add other APIs—weather, open data, even budget dashboards—to enrich the newsletter.
• Offer topic filters like “Events only” or “Road closures.”

Wrapping Up

Thanks for making it to the end! If you take Civic RoundUp for a spin—or remix it for your own community, I’d love to hear what you build. Tag me on LinkedIn. Your feedback fuels the next iteration!