diff --git a/admin/communication.php b/admin/communication.php
index f529cec..ad5ffce 100644
--- a/admin/communication.php
+++ b/admin/communication.php
@@ -158,15 +158,7 @@ case 'email_save':
 	/* Allow the fundraising campaigns id to be NULL, it'll never be 0 */
 	$fcstr = ($fcid == 0) ? 'NULL' : "'$fcid'";
 
-	//first, replace an </p> with </p><br />
-	$body=str_replace("</p>","</p><br />",$bodyhtml);
-	//now replace any <br /> with newlines
-	$body=eregi_replace('<br[[:space:]]*/?[[:space:]]*>',chr(13).chr(10),$body);
-	//and strip the rest of the tags
-	$body=strip_tags($body);
-	//and replace &nbsp;
-	$body=str_replace("&nbsp;"," ",$body);
-
+	$body=getTextFromHtml($bodyhtml);
 	mysql_query("UPDATE emails SET 
 								name='$name',
 								description='$description',
@@ -583,7 +575,8 @@ case 'dialog_sender':
 	exit;
 
 case "email_send":
-		email_send_new($_POST['to'],$_POST['from'],$_POST['subject'],$_POST['body'],$_POST['bodyhtml']);
+		$body=getTextFromHtml($_POST['bodyhtml']);
+		email_send_new($_POST['to'],$_POST['from'],$_POST['subject'],$body,$_POST['bodyhtml']);
 		happy_("Email Successfully Sent");
 	exit;
 
diff --git a/common.inc.php b/common.inc.php
index 34982ce..c1265b0 100644
--- a/common.inc.php
+++ b/common.inc.php
@@ -956,6 +956,8 @@ function email_send_new($to,$from,$subject,$body,$bodyhtml="") {
 	$mail->setFrom($from);
 	$mail->setSubject($subject);
 	$mail->setText($body);
+	$mail->setTextCharset("utf-8");
+	$mail->setHTMLCharset("utf-8");
 
 	//only add the html if we have it
 	if($bodyhtml) {
@@ -1265,5 +1267,17 @@ function format_duration($seconds, $granularity = 2)
 	return $output ? $output : '0 sec';
 }
 
+function getTextFromHtml($html) {
+	//first, replace an </p> with </p><br />
+	$text=str_replace("</p>","</p><br />",$html);
+	//now replace any <br /> with newlines
+	$text=eregi_replace('<br[[:space:]]*/?[[:space:]]*>',chr(13).chr(10),$text);
+	//and strip the rest of the tags
+	$text=strip_tags($text);
+	//and replace &nbsp;
+	$text=str_replace("&nbsp;"," ",$text);
+	return $text;
+}
+
 
 ?>