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. People set to Viewer show a small Viewer badge next to their name; everyone else is a Member.

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. Here is exactly what it does — and what it doesn’t.

A role does not change anyone’s access. 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.

• 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.

But the Role label is not purely decorative. It is the first thing FutureFund Connect looks at when it decides who a new task should be assigned to — see the next section. Keeping role labels accurate is worth the two minutes it takes.

How Tasks and Approvals Find the Right Person

Every step in a task’s approval chain is set up at the state level with a role (and sometimes a specific email address) that should handle that step. When a task is created, Connect works down this list until it finds someone:

1. The email address on the routing step, if that address belongs to someone on the Team.
2. The Role label on the Team page, if someone on that organization’s Team has a matching role. This is the usual path — a routing step set to “Treasurer” lands on whoever is labelled Treasurer on the Team page. Capitalization and extra spaces don’t matter.
3. The organization’s default assignee, if one has been set on the organization’s Edit page.
4. The current-term President from the board roster, matched by email address to a Team member.
5. Anyone on the Team who has accepted their invitation, oldest first.
6. Anyone on the Team who hasn’t accepted yet, oldest first.

A few things follow from this:

• The Role label matters. If tasks are going to the wrong person, the Team page is the first place to look — make sure the right person carries the right role label.
• A default assignee is a good safety net. On your organization’s Edit page you can pick a default assignee who catches anything that doesn’t match a role. That’s much better than a task quietly landing on whoever happens to be first in the list.
• Your board roster still matters, because the President fallback is matched from it — but only when the roster email matches a Team member’s login email.
• This applies to new tasks going forward. Changing a role or roster later does not reassign tasks that already exist. If a board member changes mid-year, update your Team roles so future tasks route correctly, and use the Assigned To dropdown on any existing task to move it by hand.

Setting a Default Assignee

1. Open your unit, council, or district and select Edit.
2. Find the field for the default user assigned to new activities.
3. Pick someone from your Team (or leave it blank).
4. Save.

The same Edit page is also where you set the sender name and reply-to email used on messages you send.

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. Add a Role label (for example, Treasurer). Choose it carefully — it drives task routing.
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 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 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, and the Resend button is hidden — resending would only bounce again. Hover the red Blocked badge to see the note.

Clearing a block is something only the FutureFund team can do, so contact FutureFund support and we’ll unblock the address and resend the invitation. Before you write in, double-check that the address is spelled correctly and ask the person to look in their spam folder — if the address itself is wrong, inviting the correct address is the faster fix.

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 a FutureFund administrator.

When one of these applies, the Remove button simply isn’t shown. 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 from the left sidebar (the page itself is titled 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. You can also star an organization to pin it to your Favorites list in the sidebar.

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.
• If tasks are routing to the wrong person, check the Role labels on your Team page first, then your default assignee, then your board roster.
• Set a default assignee on every organization you manage, so nothing lands on an unexpected person.