Broadcasts

Broadcasts are the messages you send to donors. This page explains the two broadcast types, how to create one, what each status means, and how to read the results.

Use Broadcasts whenever you want to reach donors by email — a newsletter, a fundraising appeal, an announcement, or an automatic follow-up that runs on its own.

The Two Broadcast Types

• Campaign: A one-time scheduled send to a segment — newsletters, appeals, announcements. Pick an audience, write your content, schedule the send. A campaign can be a single email blast, or a drip campaign — a series of emails spaced out over days or weeks. Spacing your messages matters: a good appeal warms donors up before making the ask instead of asking cold, and drip campaigns are built for exactly that.

• Trigger: An automation that fires on events — welcome new donors, win back lapsed donors, follow up on failed payments. Set the rule once and it runs continuously. Where a campaign is something you send, a trigger is something you switch on. It watches for the event you chose and messages each matching donor automatically.

You can create as many of each as you need — they're separate but share the same audience and template tools.

Before You Start

• Required setup: complete Marketing Setup so your emails send from your own address.
• Marketing is included on the Base plan and above.

Create a Broadcast

1. Open CharityStack and go to Broadcasts.
2. Click Create Broadcast.
3. Select a broadcast type: Campaign or Trigger.
4. The builder opens right on the page. Use the AI creator to draft your broadcast — describe what you want to send in plain language, like an expert marketer working alongside you. It can plan a full drip campaign for you, including the spacing between steps and how the messages build toward the ask.
5. Everything stays fully customizable: edit the content, design, and the email templates your broadcast uses until it looks right.
6. Pick the segment to send to.
7. Schedule the campaign, or activate the trigger.

Broadcast Lifecycle

Every broadcast has a status. Here is what each one means.

Campaign statuses:

• Draft: you’re still building it. Nothing sends.
• Scheduled: it’s queued for its start time. It has not started sending yet, and it does not count as live.
• Started: the campaign is live and working through its steps. A drip campaign stays live until its last step finishes.
• Stopped: you halted it before it finished. Remaining steps do not send.
• Finished: the campaign completed its last step. Finished campaigns can't be edited, but you can still view their details and results.

Trigger statuses:

• Draft: you’re still building it. Nothing sends.
• Active: the trigger is live ("Ongoing"). It fires whenever a donor matches its event.
• Inactive: the trigger is switched off. It stays saved and can be activated again anytime.

Your plan determines how many broadcasts can be live at the same time. If you’re at your plan’s limit, starting another broadcast is blocked until a slot frees up or you upgrade — your existing broadcasts always keep running.

Reading the Broadcasts Table

Every broadcast’s results appear in its own row. The $ Raised column displays the donations that broadcast drove, and is a measure of your marketing’s effectiveness. See Donation Impact for how it’s measured.

The other columns cover delivery and engagement: Sent, Reached, Opened, Clicked, and Unsubscribed (this counter may show 0 while unsubscribe reporting is being rolled out), plus Type, Status, Scheduled / Started, and Segment.

From each row’s menu you can:

• View Details: open the broadcast to review or edit it.
• View Payments: open a drilldown of the payments this broadcast drove.
• Start Campaign / Stop Campaign, or Activate Trigger / Deactivate Trigger.
• Duplicate or Delete the broadcast.

You can filter the table by Type, Status, and keyword, adjust columns with Edit Columns, and export the table.

Notes

Campaigns and triggers report results the same way — both show engagement and Donation Impact in their row.

Deleting a broadcast removes it, and stopping or deactivating one pauses it — either way its live slot is freed. Finished campaigns stay in the table so your history and results remain visible.

Troubleshooting

• Can’t start a new broadcast: you may be at your plan’s live-broadcast limit. Stop or delete a broadcast you no longer need, or review plan options in Settings under Billing.
• A campaign didn’t send: check its status — a Draft was never scheduled, and a Stopped campaign won’t resume on its own.
• Broadcast has no audience: its segment may have been deleted. Open the broadcast and pick a new segment.