VolunteerPress sends two kinds of email, and they follow different rules. Automatic messages go to one volunteer at a time because something happened to their signup — nobody composes or sends them. Broadcasts are messages a coordinator writes and sends to a chosen audience. Settings, the unsubscribe link, and troubleshooting all treat the two differently, so it is worth knowing which is which.
The five automatic messages
Each automatic message has exactly one trigger:
- Signup confirmation — sent the moment a signup is made. A confirmed volunteer is told they have a spot; a waitlisted volunteer is told the shift is full and that they will be emailed if a spot opens.
- Shift reminder — sent to each confirmed volunteer ahead of their shift. You choose how far ahead with the Reminder lead time (hours) setting; VolunteerPress checks for due reminders hourly, so a reminder arrives within an hour of the lead time. A lead time of 0 turns reminders off.
- Cancellation — sent when a signup is cancelled, whether the volunteer used the cancel link in an earlier email or a coordinator used Cancel signup. Deleting a signup sends nothing.
- Waitlist promotion — “A spot opened up”: sent when a waitlisted volunteer is given a spot, either automatically after a cancellation frees one or when a coordinator uses Confirm.
- Shift change — sent to a shift’s signed-up volunteers when a coordinator changes its start, end, or location and leaves Email signed-up volunteers about this change checked. Edits to a shift’s title, role, or capacity never send email.
Broadcasts
A broadcast is an email you write yourself, on the Compose tab of VolunteerPress → Email: pick an audience — one shift’s roster, one opportunity’s volunteers, or all volunteers — write the message with merge fields, preview, and send. Large sends go out in batches until everyone is reached, and the Sent tab keeps the history. The full walkthrough is Emailing volunteers.
What unsubscribe affects
Every broadcast ends with an unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing removes the volunteer from all future broadcasts — and changes nothing else. The five automatic messages keep arriving, because each one exists in service of a signup the volunteer chose to make: someone signed up for Saturday still needs their reminder, and someone whose shift moved still needs to hear about it. That is the respectful default — opting out of the mail you compose should not silence the mail their own signups depend on.
You can see who has unsubscribed on their entry under VolunteerPress → Volunteers. Only the volunteer can change it, from the link in any message they receive.
Where the settings live
Everything above is controlled from the Settings tab of VolunteerPress → Email (the tab is visible to administrators):
- Sender & reminders — the From name, From email, and Reply-to on every email the plugin sends; the reminder lead time; how many emails go out at a time during a broadcast; and the organization name and mailing address shown in the footer of broadcasts, since some jurisdictions require a postal address in promotional email. Leave the sender fields blank to use the site name and admin email.
- Templates — the subject and body of each of the five automatic messages, with merge fields such as
{volunteer_first_name}and{shift_date}filled in per volunteer.
When email goes wrong
Two failures account for nearly every email problem, and each has its own page. If messages never arrive or land in spam, your site is sending straight from its web server: see Emails go to spam or never arrive. If confirmations arrive promptly but reminders run late or a broadcast stalls, your site is not running its scheduled tasks on time: see Reminder emails are late or missing. Both fixes are part of the recommended setup.