Overview

Messaging in FutureFund Connect lets your unit email your members and board members directly from the platform. It is a simple way to send announcements, reminders, and updates without leaving Connect — so you can keep everyone informed and stay on top of your group’s communications.

Messages are delivered by email. You can send right away or schedule them for later, send a test copy to yourself first, and then check delivery details afterward to confirm your message reached people.

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

Who Receives Your Message

When you send a message from your unit, it goes to:

• Everyone on your unit’s membership list for the current school year, and
• Your unit’s own board members for the current term (they are always included automatically).

There is no option to type in individual email addresses or pick one person — the message goes to your membership list plus your board. If someone should receive a message, make sure they are on your membership list or your board roster.

Note: districts, councils, and state PTAs choose their message audience differently, using saved Recipient Groups. Units keep this simpler membership-list approach since units don’t have sub-organizations to filter by.

How to Send a Message

1. Go to your unit’s Messaging page.
2. Click Send Message to start a new message.
3. Confirm the recipient selection. For a unit this sends to your membership list (your board members are always included too).
4. Set the From/Reply-To option so replies go to the right place. Your choices are:
   • Your unit’s saved sender name and email, if one has been set up on your unit’s Edit page
   • Your unit’s name (replies go to no-reply@futurefund.com)
   • You, the sender (your own name and email)
5. Enter a Subject (up to 150 characters).
6. Write your message in the editor. You can format text, add links, and more.
7. To add files, click to expand the Attachments section. It accepts images, PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and plain text or CSV files.
8. Under When would you like to send this message?, choose:
   • Send Now to send right away, or
   • Send Later and pick a date and time (Pacific time).
9. Click Send Test to email a copy to yourself first and check how it looks.
10. When you are ready, click Send to deliver it to everyone.

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

Setting your unit’s reply-to address

The “saved sender name and email” option only appears once someone has set it up:

1. Open your unit’s dashboard and click Edit.
2. Fill in the sender name (the name that appears on messages) and the reply-to email address.
3. Save.

This is worth doing — it means replies reach a real inbox instead of disappearing into no-reply.

A note on attachments

• Attachments accept images, PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and plain text or CSV files.
• 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 let you know before sending. For bigger files, consider sharing a link instead.

Tracking What You Sent

Your Messaging page lists every message you’ve sent, newest first, along with any still scheduled to go out.

• Before it sends, open a scheduled message to 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 to see the per-person breakdown — exactly who received the email, opened it, clicked it, bounced, reported it as spam, or unsubscribed.

This is a helpful way to confirm an important message actually reached your audience.

Automatic Notifications

Some emails are sent for you automatically — for example, when a task is assigned, updated, approved, or rejected, plus a Monday reminder if you have past-due tasks. You do not need to do anything; Connect handles these notifications on its own. See How Activity Notifications Work for the details.

Reading Messages You Receive

Messages sent to you also land in your own inbox inside Connect, called My Messages in the left sidebar. A badge shows how many you haven’t read. From there you can open a message to read it, mark it read or unread, delete it, and — when a message is tied to a task — jump straight to that task. This is separate from the sent-message view above, which is for people sending messages.

Tips

• Always click Send Test before sending to your whole group. It is the easiest way to catch a typo or formatting issue.
• Pick a From/Reply-To that makes sense for replies — for example, your president or secretary — so responses reach the right person.
• Use Send Later to schedule communications (like a monthly newsletter) ahead of time and stay consistent.
• Keep your membership list and board roster up to date so the right people receive your messages.
• After sending something important, open the message and check View Recipients to confirm it went through.