When sending difficult communications to your community, begin with the summarized position of your members.
Make it succint and reflective of the group.
If there is more than one position, mention both (or all) of them. e.g.
We've spoken to many of you this week and know you're very upset that we removed the chat rooms.
Some of you used these chat rooms every week and enjoyed having a real-time place to communicate with one of you. A few of you even met people in real life you first ran into via the chat rooms.
[…now add your message…]
However, we hope you understand that we have limited resources and have to use them where they have the biggest impact. The popularity of the chat rooms has continued to decline and the technology proves vulnerable to malicious hacks. Therefore, we have decided to remove the chat rooms.
We know you might be upset about this. If any of you would like to create and host your own chat rooms, we would be happy to link to that. But we can't host it as part of the site or support it ourselves. I hope this makes sense to everyone and thank you for reading.
Only introduce your actions/your message afterwards.
By showing that you acknowledge, understand, and respect your member's position you increase your perceived sensitivity to their concerns.
This exercise also forces you to carefully consider solutions to the concerns of your members.
