Overview

Managing who can help with your PTA shouldn’t be stressful. FutureFund Connect keeps it simple: you invite people by email, choose how much they can do, and they get access to your organization. This article explains how access works, what a “role” really is, how tasks find the right person, and how invitations flow from sent to accepted.

Two Access Levels: Member and Viewer

Everyone you invite gets one of two access levels:

• Member — full access. Members can view everything and make changes: editing records, uploading documents, submitting tasks, and so on. This is the access everyone had before access levels existed, and it’s still the default.
• Viewer — read-only access. Viewers can look around and see everything a Member can see — tasks, documents, reports, board rosters, messages — but they can’t create, edit, or delete anything. Buttons and forms for making changes are hidden for Viewers, and any attempt to submit a change is blocked. Personal actions like starring a Favorite or following a task for notifications still work for Viewers.

You choose the access level when you invite someone, and you can change it later from the Team page. A Viewer can’t be given permission to manage other people’s access — that management ability requires Member access.

Access to an organization is otherwise all-or-nothing: there’s no way to restrict a Member to only certain pages or sections. If you want someone to see everything but touch nothing, Viewer is the right choice.

You manage access from the Team page for each organization. There you’ll see everyone who has access, along with their status and access level.

Access Flows Down the Hierarchy

PTAs are organized in levels: State PTA, PTA District, PTA Council, and PTA/PTSA Unit. When you have access at a higher level, that access automatically reaches the levels below it:

• Council access also reaches every unit in that council.
• District access also reaches the district’s councils and all of their units.
• State access reaches everything in the state.

This means you don’t have to add someone to every single unit one by one. If a district volunteer needs to help all the units in their district, granting access at the district level is the efficient choice. Their access level (Member or Viewer) carries down with them — a district Viewer is a Viewer everywhere beneath that district too.

Access at one organization does not spill sideways. Someone with access to Council A does not automatically get access to Council B.

What a "Role" Really Is

When you invite someone, you can give them a Role such as President, Treasurer, or Parliamentarian. This is helpful, but it’s important to understand what it does — and what it doesn’t do.

A role is just a label to help you remember why you added someone. The in-app help says it plainly: the role is an informative label and does not impact their access level. Access level (Member vs. Viewer) is a separate setting.

In other words:

• Two Members of the same organization have the same access, no matter what role label each one has.
• Changing someone’s role does not give or take away any access, and does not switch them between Member and Viewer.
• The role is there for your own clarity, like a note to yourself.

How Tasks and Approvals Find the Right Person

Tasks and approvals are routed using board positions from your board roster, not the role label on a person’s invitation.

A few things are worth knowing:

• When a new task is created, the system looks for a single person to assign it to, based on the board position the task is meant for.
• The match is made by position. The system finds the person filling that position and assigns the task to them.
• This applies to new tasks going forward. Changing a board position later does not reassign tasks that already exist. If a board member changes mid-year, update your board roster so future tasks route to the right person.

If a task seems to be going to the wrong person, check your board roster first to make sure the right person is listed in the right position.

Inviting Someone to Your Organization

1. Go to the organization’s Team page.
2. Select Invite User.
3. Enter the person’s full name and email address.
4. Optionally add a Role label (for example, Treasurer).
5. Choose an Access Level: Member (can make changes) or Viewer (can see everything, but can’t make changes).
6. Save the invitation.

The person will receive an email inviting them to join. Until they accept, the invitation is pending — they’re listed on your Team page, but they haven’t set up their access yet.

Invitation Statuses

Each person on your Team page shows one of these statuses:

• Invited — The invitation has been sent and is waiting to be accepted.
• Accepted — The person has accepted and now has access.
• Expired — The invitation sat unaccepted past its expiration. Invitations expire after about 7 days.
• Blocked — We were unable to deliver email to that address (see below).

Resending an Invitation

If someone hasn’t accepted yet — or their invitation has expired — you can send it again:

1. On the Team page, find the person showing an Invited or Expired status.
2. Select Resend.
3. Confirm, and a fresh invitation email goes out.

Resending also resets the roughly 7-day expiration window.

When an Invitation Is "Blocked"

A Blocked status means we couldn’t deliver email to that address, so the person isn’t receiving notifications. This usually happens because of:

• A hard email bounce (for example, a misspelled or closed address)
• A spam complaint
• An unsubscribe

While someone is blocked, we won’t keep sending email to that address. To fix it, you can use Unblock & Resend, which clears the block and sends the invitation again. If the address keeps getting blocked, double-check that it’s spelled correctly and ask the person to look in their spam folder. If problems continue, contact support.

Removing Access

To remove someone, go to the Team page and select Remove next to their name. A couple of safety rules apply:

• You cannot remove yourself.
• You cannot remove an administrator.

These guardrails are there so an organization never accidentally loses all of its access.

Switching Between Organizations

If you have access to more than one organization, you can move between them easily:

1. Open My Organizations (also shown as Select Organization).
2. You’ll see a list of every organization you have access to.
3. Select the one you want to work in.

This is the simplest way to jump from, say, your council to one of its units without hunting through menus.

Quick Tips

• Grant access at the highest level that makes sense. District access is far more efficient than adding someone to every unit individually.
• Use Viewer access for people who need visibility but shouldn’t make changes — an incoming board member getting oriented, an advisor, or an interested parent.
• If someone says they can’t see an organization, check whether they have access to it directly, or to a level above it.
• If someone can see a page but the edit/delete buttons are missing, check whether they’re set to Viewer access.
• Use the Role label to keep your team organized, but remember it’s only a note — it doesn’t change anyone’s access.
• If tasks are routing to the wrong person, your board roster is the place to look.