Choosing Recipients

Every broadcast needs recipients. You can send to all families in the season, narrow it down with filters, paste in a list of addresses or phone numbers, or pre-select specific families from another page.

Recipient Modes

When creating a broadcast, you’ll see two options under Recipients:

• Campers — Sends to parents of campers enrolled in the current season. You can narrow this down with filters (see below).
• Paste List — Paste in a list of email addresses (for email broadcasts) or phone numbers (for SMS and voice). One per line or separated by commas.

There are also two additional modes that appear when you start a broadcast from the Families or Campers page:

• Selected Families — Sends to the specific families you selected before creating the broadcast.
• Selected Campers — Sends to parents of the specific campers you selected.

Filtering by Grade, Bunk, Term, and Status

When the recipient mode is set to Campers, you can use these filters to narrow down who receives the broadcast:

• Grades — Select one or more grades. Only parents of campers in those grades will receive the message.
• Bunks — Select one or more bunks. If you’ve already selected grades, the bunk list will only show bunks linked to those grades.
• Terms — Select which terms to include: Full Season, First Half, Second Half, or others your camp uses. To reach all first-half campers, select both “First Half” and “Full Season.”
• Approval Status — By default, only approved campers are included. You can change this to include other statuses or clear the filter entirely.

If you leave a filter blank, it won’t be applied — all campers matching the other filters will be included.

This Season vs. All Contacts

Under Audience, you can choose:

• This Season — Sends only to families enrolled in the current season. This is the default and most common choice.
• All Contacts — Sends to all families who have ever been enrolled at your camp, across all seasons. The grade, bunk, term, and approval status filters are hidden in this mode since they only apply to the current season.

Consolidate by Family

The Consolidate by Family toggle controls how messages are sent when a family has multiple campers:

• On (default) — Each family gets one message. Use {camper_names} in your message to list all their campers’ names together (e.g., “Jake, Sarah, and Emma”).
• Off — Each camper gets their own message with individual details. This lets you use per-camper merge tags like {camper_name}, {bunk_name}, and {grade_name} with each camper’s specific information.

Parent Type

Under Parent Type, choose who should receive the message:

• Both — Sends to both parents (fathers and mothers).
• Fathers — Sends only to fathers.
• Mothers — Sends only to mothers.

Adding Extra Recipients

Below the filters, you’ll see an Additional Emails (or Additional Phones) section where you can paste extra addresses or phone numbers. These people will receive the broadcast in addition to the filtered recipients.

You can also expand the Include staff emails (or Include staff phones) section to add staff members and your camp’s contact information as additional recipients.

Good to Know

• Need more complex filters? Go to the Families or Campers page first, apply your filters there, select the people you want, and then choose Send Broadcast from the bulk actions menu.
• When using Paste List mode, family-specific merge tags like {family_name} won’t work because the system doesn’t know which family each address belongs to. Only camp and season tags are available.