in reply to Help with Template Workflow

Having a dispatch table to handle multiple operations is the basic strategy. But I think you want, 
my %dispatch = (
        home            => \&home,
        donate          => \&donate,
        news            => \&news,
        faq             => \&faq,
        ....
);

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instead of 
my %dispatch = (
        home            => sub { \&home(); },
        donate          => sub { \&donate(); },
        news            => sub { \&news(); },
        faq             => sub { \&faq(); },
        ....
);

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So you can say, for example, 
my $default_action = 'home';
my $action = $cgi->param('a') || '';

# is $action recognized?
my $executor = $dispatch{$action} ||
               $dispatch{$default_action};
&$executor();

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When you specify \&some_func(), you actually mean to call some_func() and make a reference of whatever it returns. And that reference is what you get when you dispatch, for example, $dispatch{home}->(). Some thing I'm sure not what you want.
Since I can't put a template inside a template
What's your exact needs regarding this? If you have another html file, wheter is static or another template, you can use the <tmpl_include> command. This way, you need to process the placeholders in the included template file at the same level of the main template file. See the manpage for details. 
... some html....
<tmpl_include name="other-template.html">
<tmpl_include name="other-static.html">

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If what you need is some kind of multi processing template then you need to work this out yourself. One way is by having a number of template objects according to the number of included templates. 
<!-- news.html -->
...some placeholders here...
<!-- end of news.html -->

<!-- faq.html -->
... placeholders for FAQ ...
<!-- end of faq.html -->

<!-- main.html -->
<html>
....
Today: <tmpl_var name="today">

<p><tmpl_var name="news">

<p><tmpl_var name="faq">
...
</html>
<!-- end of main.html -->

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Now, you have to process the news.html and faq.html separately, getting their outputs and putting it in their respective placeholders when processing main.html. Something like (imaginatively), 
# assuming load_template() is defined somewhere
# to return a template object

my $faq = load_template('faq.html');
$faq->param(PARAMS_FOR_FAQ_PLACEHOLDERS);

my $news = load_template('news.html');
$news->param(PARAMS_FOR_NEWS_PLACEHOLDERS);

my $template = load_template('main.html');
$template->param(
  today => scalar(localtime),
  news => $news->output,
  faq  => $faq->output,
);

print $template->output;

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Having said all of that, I really like to suggest you to try CGI::Application. It would make your life easier :-) It shifts the dispatch table to some higher extend.

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