Who Receives Notifications?

Only watchers of an activity receive email notifications. You will not receive a notification for your own actions — the system excludes the person performing the action.

How Do I Become a Watcher?

You are automatically added as a watcher when you:

• Are assigned to the activity (e.g., a task lands on your dashboard)
• Submit an activity for review
• Approve or reject an activity
• Withdraw an activity back to pending
• Add a comment on an activity
• Are the next reviewer in the approval chain — when someone ahead of you in the review process receives the activity, you are also added as a watcher so you’re aware of activity before it reaches you
• Are configured as a follower — your state PTA can configure specific roles at specific levels (unit, council, district) to automatically watch activities when they are created. Followers are matched on the Role label on that organization’s Team page, and only people who have already accepted their invitation are added.

You can also manually watch or unwatch an activity using the Follow / Unfollow button on the activity detail page. This works for Viewers too.

When Are Notifications Sent?

You’ll receive an email notification when:

Emails are sent in whatever language your account is set to (English or Spanish).

Weekly Past-Due Reminder

On top of the notifications above, every Monday at 8:00 am Pacific FutureFund Connect checks for tasks that are past their due date. If you have any tasks assigned to you that are overdue, you’ll get a single reminder email listing each one — the task name, its status, the organization it belongs to, and the due date — with a button to jump straight to each task.

You’ll only get this email when you actually have overdue tasks, so an empty inbox on Monday is a good sign. It’s separate from the watcher-based notifications above — it goes out based on assignment, not watching. Following a task does not put it on someone else’s Monday reminder, and unfollowing does not take your own assigned tasks off yours.

How Does the Approval Chain Work?

Activities can have a multi-level approval chain. For example, a Bylaws submission might flow:

1. Unit submits the bylaws
2. Council reviews and approves (or rejects)
3. District reviews and approves (or rejects)

When the activity moves from one level to the next, the person assigned at the next level receives an assignment notification. All existing watchers (e.g., the person who submitted) also receive a notification about the assignment change.

If a level has nobody assigned to act on it, the activity skips that level entirely and moves to the next one that can — so nothing stalls waiting on an empty seat.

If the activity is rejected, it goes back to the first level (the submitter), and all watchers are notified.

If the activity is approved at the final level, all watchers are notified of the approval.

Where Can I Read My Messages?

Every notification email also lands in your in-app inbox, called My Messages. This is a handy place to catch up if you missed an email or cleaned out your inbox.

To open it, click My Messages in the left sidebar — a badge on it shows how many you haven’t read. Your messages are listed newest first, and each one shows the subject and the date it was sent. If a message is tied to a task, you’ll also see which organization it belongs to.

Once you’re viewing a message, you can:

• Read the full message — open any message to see its full contents. Opening a message automatically marks it as read.
• Mark as Unread — if you want to come back to it later, use Mark as Unread so it stands out again.
• Mark as Read — if a message is unread, you can mark it read without opening it fully.
• Delete — use Delete to remove a message from your inbox. You’ll be asked to confirm before it’s removed.
• View Task — when a message is connected to a task, a View Task button takes you straight to that activity.

If your inbox is empty, you’ll simply see a “No messages” note — nothing to worry about.

Why Might I Not Be Receiving Notifications?

If you’re not receiving activity notifications, check the following:

1. You may not be a watcher — If you haven’t interacted with the activity (submitted, commented, approved, etc.) and aren’t configured as a follower, you won’t receive notifications. Visit the activity and click Follow to start watching it.

2. Your Team role may not match the routing step — Each step in the approval chain is configured with a specific role or email address, and Connect matches that role against the Role label on your organization’s Team page. If nobody carries a matching label, the activity may be assigned to someone else — or skip your level altogether. Check your Team page first.

3. Your invitation may still be pending — Follower rules only add people who have accepted their invitation. If your Team status shows Invited, accept it first.

4. Your email may be blocked — If your Team status shows a red Blocked badge, we couldn’t deliver email to that address and have stopped trying. Contact FutureFund support to clear it.

5. Check your email spam/junk folder — Notification emails come from FutureFund Connect. Make sure they aren’t being filtered.

6. You performed the action — The system does not send you a notification for actions you take yourself. For example, if you approve an activity, you won’t receive the approval notification — but other watchers will.

Tips

• Watch early — If you want to stay informed about an activity, click Follow as soon as you see it. You’ll receive all future notifications.
• Comments notify everyone — Adding a comment is a good way to communicate with all watchers on an activity.
• Nothing slips through the cracks — Even if you miss a notification along the way, the Monday past-due reminder will catch any assigned task that’s fallen behind.
• Check My Messages — Even if you delete or lose a notification email, you can always find it again in your My Messages inbox.
• Contact your state PTA admin — If your role should be automatically receiving notifications for certain activity types, ask your state PTA admin to verify the follower and routing configuration for that activity’s trigger.