Overview

The Messaging area lets you email board members across your entire district or council in one go. It’s your main way to share announcements, reminders, and outreach with the unit leaders you support.

Instead of typing out email addresses, you pick one or more Recipient Groups — saved, named audiences — and Connect gathers the matching board members for you.

You’ll find Messaging in the navigation bar under your organization’s name.

Recipient Groups

A Recipient Group is a saved combination of filters describing who should receive a message — for example, “Unit Treasurers” or “Council Presidents.” Once saved, a group is available on every message you send going forward, so you don’t have to rebuild the same audience each time.

Four ready-made groups come with Connect and can’t be edited or deleted. They’re shown only where they can actually reach someone:

• All Board Members
• District Board Members (districts only)
• Council Board Members
• Unit Board Members

Because every group is scoped to your own organization, “All Board Members” sent from a district means every board member in that district — not the whole state.

Building a Group

1. Go to your district or council, open Messaging, and click Manage Groups.
2. Start a new group and give it a name (up to 100 characters).
3. Add one or more filter rows. Each row has three parts: what to filter on, Is any of or Is not any of, and the values.
   • Position — one or more board roles (President, Treasurer, and so on).
   • Organization level — the levels you can reach. A district can pick Districts, Councils, Units (In-Council), and Units (Out-of-Council). A council can pick Councils, Units (In-Council), and Units (Out-of-Council).
   • Council — for districts, one or more specific councils.
4. Rows are joined with And — a board member must match every row to be included.
5. Use Is not any of to carve people out. For example, “Organization level is any of Units” And “Position is not any of Parliamentarian” reaches every unit board member except parliamentarians.
6. A live count and a sample of up to five matching people update as you add filters, so you can confirm the group before saving.
7. Click Save.

Open Manage Groups any time to edit or delete a group you created. The four predefined groups can’t be changed.

How to Send a Message

1. Go to your district or council and open Messaging.
2. Click Send Message to start a new message.
3. Pick one or more Recipient Groups. The form shows how many unique people you’re about to reach and how many duplicates were removed, so someone who matches more than one group is only emailed once.
4. Set the From/Reply-To address. This controls where replies go. Your choices are your district or council’s saved sender name and email (if one has been set up on the organization’s Edit page), your district or council name with a no-reply address, and your own name and email.
5. Type a Subject (up to 150 characters).
6. Write your message in the rich text editor. You can format text, add links, and create lists.
7. Attach any files if needed — click to expand the Attachments section (images, PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and plain text or CSV files are all supported).
8. Under When would you like to send this message?, choose Send Now or Send Later. If you pick Send Later, enter the date and time you’d like it to go out.
9. (Optional) Click Send Test to email a copy to yourself first so you can check how it looks.
10. Click Send to deliver your message.

Scheduled messages go out on a check that runs every few minutes, so a message set for 9:00 am arrives right around then.

Attachment limits

• Each file can be up to 10MB.
• The whole message, including all attachments, must stay under about 13MB total.
• If your files are too large, Connect will tell you before sending. For bigger files, share a link instead.

Good to know about recipients

• Recipients come entirely from the groups you pick — build a group that includes your own board if you want them to receive the message too.
• A person who would receive the message more than once (for example, they match two selected groups) only gets one copy.
• Groups match board members in the current term, so keep your rosters up to date.
• If no one matches your selected groups, Connect will let you know there are no recipients so you can adjust your choices.
• Messages sent before Recipient Groups launched keep showing the original audience they were sent to.

Reviewing and Tracking What You Sent

Your Messaging list shows every message, newest first, including any still scheduled to go out.

• Before it sends, you can open a scheduled message and Edit or Delete it.
• After it sends, open the message to see summary counts across the top: Recipients, Delivered, Opened, Clicked, Bounced, Unsubscribed, and Spam.
• Click View Recipients on a sent message to see the per-person breakdown — exactly who received it, opened it, clicked it, or bounced.

Additional Features

• Rich text editor — format your messages with bold, italics, links, and lists.
• File attachments — attach images, PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and plain text or CSV files.
• Send Test — send a test copy to yourself before sending to everyone.
• Scheduled sending — choose Send Later to schedule a message for a future date and time.
• Delivery tracking — summary counts plus a per-recipient view.

Tips

• Save a Recipient Group for any audience you message often, like “All Unit Presidents,” so you don’t rebuild it each time.
• Watch the live count and sample while building a group to make sure it matches who you expect.
• Use Send Test to preview formatting and attachments before sending to everyone.
• Schedule important announcements with Send Later so they arrive at the start of the day.
• Check your delivery tracking to spot bounced addresses, then follow up to get updated contact information. The Bounced Emails Report does the same job across your whole organization.
• Keep messages short with a clear call to action, especially when asking units to complete tasks or submit documents.