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 — Send to a list of email addresses or phone numbers that you paste in directly. These do not need to be in Campflow — you can reach anyone. See Paste List below.

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.

Paste List

The Paste List mode lets you send a broadcast to any email addresses or phone numbers — they do not need to belong to families or contacts in Campflow. This is useful for reaching people outside your camp database, such as prospective families, vendors, or community members.

To use it, choose Paste List under Recipients, then paste your list into the text area. Enter one address or number per line, or separate them with commas. For phone numbers, any common US format works (e.g., 555-123-4567, (555) 123-4567).

Since paste list recipients are not linked to family records, per-family merge tags like {family_name} or {balance} are not available. Only camp, season, and general merge tags work in this mode.

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 — 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 (default) — 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.

Including Staff Members

Expand the Include staff emails (or Include staff phones) section to add staff members as additional recipients. Select individual staff members from the list to include them alongside the families receiving the broadcast. You can also include your camp’s contact information from this section.

Staff members receive the same message as parents, but because they are not linked to a family record, any merge tags in the message (like {family_name} or {balance}) will appear as raw placeholder text instead of actual values. Campflow will warn you about this before sending.

Advanced Filtering with Bulk Actions

The broadcast page lets you filter by grade, bunk, term, and approval status — but sometimes you need to reach families based on something else entirely, like bus color, a custom field, or any other column you can see on your tables.

Here’s how:

1. Go to the Families or Campers page.
2. Use the table’s filters, search, or column sorting to narrow down exactly who you need.
3. Select all the filtered results (or pick specific rows).
4. Open Bulk Actions and choose Send Message.

This creates a new broadcast pre-filled with exactly those recipients. From there, you can compose your message, choose email or SMS, and send as usual.

Which page should I start from?

The page you start from affects which merge tags are available:

• From the Families page — The broadcast is consolidated by family. You can use {camper_names} to list all of a family’s campers in one message (e.g., “Jake, Sarah, and Emma”).
• From the Campers page — Each selected camper gets their own message. You can use per-camper merge tags like {camper_name}, {bunk_name}, and {grade_name} with each camper’s specific information.

If you’re not sure, start from the Families page for general announcements, and the Campers page when the message needs to reference individual camper details.

Good to Know

• You can send broadcasts to people who are not in Campflow. Use the Paste List mode to send to any email addresses or phone numbers, or use the Additional Emails / Additional Phones field to add extra recipients alongside your filtered families.
• When using Paste List or Additional Emails/Phones, Campflow validates the format before sending. Invalid addresses or numbers are flagged and skipped — they will not block the rest of the broadcast.
• If you need to narrow recipients by a custom field, bus route, or any other column not available on the broadcast page, use the bulk actions approach from the Families or Campers page instead.