Emailing Your Supporters

You can email friends, family and coworkers about your fundraiser without leaving your fundraising page. Keep your own contact list, write a personal message, and send it to the people you choose. Emails come from the organization you are fundraising for, with your name on them, and replies go straight to your own inbox.

Before You Start

The Contacts and Email tabs appear on your fundraising page editor once the event organizer has turned on participant email. If you do not see them, the organizer has not turned it on for this event.

Your Contact List

Open the Contacts tab. Only you can see this list. It is not shared with the organization and is not added to their records. If you fundraise for the same organization again, the same list is waiting for you.

Each contact shows one of two statuses:

Can email: you can include this person in an email.
Can't email (unsubscribed or blocked): this person has unsubscribed, or the organization cannot email this address. You cannot select them.

Add or Edit a Contact

Click Add contact.
Enter an email address and, if you like, a first and last name.
Click Save.

To change or remove a contact, click Edit next to them. The edit window also lists the emails you have sent that person. Click Remove to take them off your list.

Import Contacts from a CSV File

You can import up to 500 contacts at a time from a CSV file. The file needs a header row and a column of email addresses. First and last name columns are optional. To start from a blank file, click Download a template in the import window.

Click Import CSV and choose your file.
Check the columns. The email, first name and last name columns are matched from your headers; change them if they are wrong.
Click Preview. Each row shows what will happen: New, Updates an existing contact, Duplicate in this file, or Can't import (usually an invalid email address).
Uncheck any rows you do not want, then click Import selected.

If some rows were not imported, click Download the rows that were not imported for a list of row numbers and reasons. Fix those rows in your file and import it again. A preview expires after 30 minutes; if it does, preview the file again.

Write and Send an Email

Open the Email tab and click New email.
To start from wording your organizer wrote, choose one from Start from a template. You can change any of it.
Enter a subject and your message.
Under Recipients, check the people you want to email. Use the filter box to find someone, or Select all. You can choose up to 500 people per email.
Click Save draft to come back to it later, or Preview and send when you are ready.
The preview shows the email as your first recipient will see it, and how many people will receive it. Click Send.

Your message is sent as plain text: line breaks are kept, but there is no bold, color or images. Each person gets their own email; recipients do not see each other.

Personalize Your Message

Click a button below the message box to insert a personalization field where your cursor is. Each one is filled in for every recipient when the email is sent.

Button	Field	Filled in with
First name		The contact's first name, or "friend" if you did not enter one
Last name		The contact's last name
Your name		Your name
Page name		Your fundraising page's name
Page link		The link to your fundraising page
Team link		Your team's page, or your own page if you are not on a team
Goal		Your fundraising goal
Organization		The organization you are fundraising for

What Your Supporters See

The email comes from the organization's email address, with a sender name like "Your Name via Organization".
When someone replies, the reply goes to the email address on your account.
The bottom of every email says you sent it from your fundraising page, and shows the organization's name, mailing address and an unsubscribe link. You cannot remove this.

Check What Happened to an Email

On the Email tab, click Sent, then click an email to see each recipient's status.

Status	What it means
Queued	Waiting to go out. Emails usually send within a minute or two.
Sending	Going out now.
Sent	The mail service accepted it and is delivering it.
Delivered	The recipient's email provider accepted it.
Bounced	It could not be delivered, for example because the inbox is full or the address does not exist.
Not sent (unsubscribed or blocked)	The person unsubscribed or cannot be emailed, so it was not sent, or they unsubscribed after receiving it.
Failed	The mail service refused it and nothing was sent. Click Try again to resend to that person.
Unknown, check with the organizer	A problem happened while sending, and it may or may not have gone out. It is not resent automatically, so nobody gets your email twice. Your organizer can look into it.
Canceled	Stopped before it was sent.

To stop emails that have not gone out yet, open the email and click Cancel unsent emails.

Limits and Rules

Daily limit. Your organizer sets how many people you can email in a day. Every recipient counts, including ones that later bounce or are canceled. The count resets at midnight UTC.
Unsubscribes are permanent. When someone unsubscribes from a participant email, no participant fundraising for that organization can email them again, including you. Removing and re-adding the contact does not change this.
Your email address. If you change the email address on your account, emails still waiting to go out are canceled so replies never go to an old address. Send them again.
When the event closes or the organizer turns email off, emails that have not gone out are canceled.

Common Messages

Daily recipient limit reached. Send to fewer people, or wait until after midnight UTC.
No eligible recipients were selected. Everyone you chose has unsubscribed or cannot be emailed.
The organization needs a verified sending domain or a mailing address. Your organizer has a setup step to finish. Let them know.
Reload to see the latest version. The draft or contact was changed in another window. Reload the page and try again.