Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are helpful if you want to send out mass communication to a group of volunteers, church contacts, or church coordinators.

Extracting a mailing list from the database needs authorization from a senior member of your team. To create a mailing list request, click on Show New Request Form.

The New Request box allows you to choose what type of mailing list you need (Volunteer, Church Contact, or Church Coordinator), how you plan on contacting them, a title that will be seen by the senior who authorizes your list, and when you require the list by.

The Data Restrictions box allows you to filter down who you want to bring back to your list, according to various criteria. 

The Information Required box allows you to choose what information will be included for each person in your mailing list. It's a good idea to only tick the information that you need for the purposes of your mailing list.

The criteria for restricting who to bring back in your mailing lists changes depending on if you choose Volunteer, Church Contact or Church Coordinator as the Mailing List Type. 

The criteria for what information you can request for your chosen group changes depending on if you choose Email or Letter as the Contact Method.

The Purpose of the Extract box allows you to give a brief summary of the reason you need this mailing list, which will be sent to the senior who authorizes the list.

Who will see the Extract refers to who is going to download and/or view this list of information - i.e. yourself and anyone else in your team you will share the information with. 

We have permission from volunteers and church contacts to store their personal data securely on our database, and use it for contacting them under various circumstances. However, we don't have permission to share their data with external parties or store it on our own computers. So it's important to accurately fill in the Who will see the Extract box and to delete the mailing list (Excel file) from your computer once you've used it for the specified purpose.

Once you've filled in all the information you need, click on Request Export. You'll be able to see your request below, under Mailing Lists Requested, pending authorization from a senior. An email will be sent to the relevant senior(s) in your region, for them to view your request and authorize it. 

When your request is authorized or declined, you will be notified by email. You'll need to come back to the Mailing Lists view to find your request and download your mailing list.

Once authorized, your mailing list will be available to download for a specified period of time - usually two weeks. You can see when your mailing list is due to expire under the Expiry Date column. You can download the list as many times as needed before the expiry date. Each time you download the list, all of the checks you set out in your criteria will run again, so any new information will be added to the latest download.

For example, if you download a list, notice that a particular volunteer's email address was wrong, go onto the database to update it and then download the list again, the second list will contain the updated email address. 

We recommend that when creating mailing lists, you always download the list, check all the information looks correct, update anything on the database as necessary and then download the list again to get your final version. We also recommend downloading the list just before you are planning on using it to ensure you have the most accurate and up-to-date information ready to be used.