Campaigns & Events

Overview

A campaign in PurposeTech represents a specific volunteer programme, event, or fundraising appeal. Each campaign gets its own branded signup site, jobs, shifts, and volunteer pool. Most organisations run one or two campaigns per year, but you can have as many active campaigns as you need.

Creating a campaign

1. Go to Campaigns in the admin portal
2. Click New Campaign
3. Fill in the basics:

4. Save and proceed to configuration

The admin dashboard shows all your campaigns at a glance — active, upcoming, and ended — with quick access to each one.

Campaign configuration

Branding

Each campaign can have its own visual identity or inherit from the parent tenant:

Enable Override Tenant Settings to use campaign-specific branding (white-label). When disabled, the campaign inherits everything from the tenant.

When to override:

• Co-branded events with a partner organisation (different logo)
• Campaigns with a distinct visual identity (different colours)
• Multi-language campaigns (different copy overrides)
• Events with campaign-specific headers/footers (different navigation)

Signup form

Configure which fields volunteers fill in during registration:

Standard fields (always present)

• First name
• Last name
• Email
• Phone number

Registration types

Campaigns support multiple registration types to accommodate different group structures:

• Individual — single volunteer signup
• Family — add adults and children with names tracked for headcount
• Corporate/Group — register a team with an organisation name and group size

See the Group Registration demo and Festivals & Events for interactive examples.

Custom fields

Add any additional fields using a flexible field schema:

For each custom field, you can set:

• Required vs. optional — control which fields must be filled in
• Display order — arrange fields in the order that makes sense
• Help text — add instructions or examples below the field

Email configuration

Each campaign has its own email schedule and templates. You can use the tenant defaults or override per campaign.

Each template supports:

• Scheduling — immediate (after action), relative (X days before shift), or absolute (specific date/time)
• Enable/disable — turn individual templates on or off per campaign
• Custom variables — inject campaign-specific content (campaign name, shift details, etc.)
• Shift type email notes — role-specific instructions included automatically
• Test send — preview any template by sending it to yourself before going live

See Email & Messaging for detailed template configuration.

Privacy settings

When to use private campaigns:

• Soft launch — test everything with your team before going public
• Invite-only events — corporate volunteering, partner events
• Staged rollout — share the password with early-access groups first, then go public
• Internal programmes — staff volunteering that shouldn't be publicly visible

You can switch between public and private at any time. Going from private to public doesn't affect existing registrations.

Shift expiry

Set a shift expiry date at the campaign level to control when registration closes:

• After the expiry date, volunteers can no longer sign up through the campaign site
• Admins can still manually assign volunteers after the cutoff
• Coordinators cannot add volunteers to expired shifts (admins can override)

This is useful for logistics — you need to finalise numbers a few days before the event to prepare materials, printed rosters, and equipment.

Campaign lifecycle

Phase 1: Setup (weeks before)

Phase 2: Recruitment (weeks before)

Phase 3: Event day

Phase 4: After the event

Multi-campaign management

Running multiple campaigns simultaneously

Each tenant can have multiple active campaigns:

• Different campaigns — e.g., a street appeal and a gala running at the same time
• Each is independent — own signup page, own jobs/shifts, own emails
• Centralised admin — manage all campaigns from one admin portal, switch between them with a dropdown
• Shared volunteer pool — volunteers belong to the tenant and can be assigned to any campaign

Campaign-specific branding

Each campaign can look completely different to volunteers:

• Different logo, colours, and copy
• Different header/footer
• Different custom domain (e.g., gala.yourcharity.org.nz vs appeal.yourcharity.org.nz)
• Different email templates

To volunteers, each campaign appears to be a separate site. To admins, they're all managed from one portal.

Year-on-year campaigns

For recurring programmes (e.g., an annual street appeal), you create a new campaign each year. The cycle builds on previous years:

Planning tips:

• Review last year's coverage report — which areas were under-staffed? Focus recruitment there
• Check the registration timeline — when did signups peak? Time your marketing accordingly
• Look at no-show rates — areas with high no-shows may need more buffer (higher desired volunteer counts)
• Import returning volunteers early — they're more reliable than new signups

Email templates in detail

Campaigns use a template-based email system. Each template is tied to a lifecycle event in the volunteer journey:

All templates use your branding (logo, colours, header, footer) and support personalisation variables like volunteer name, shift date/time, location name, and campaign-specific custom fields.

Campaign-specific templates

By default, all campaigns share the tenant's email templates. If you need different email content for a specific campaign:

1. Go to the campaign's email settings
2. Enable Use campaign-specific templates
3. Each template is cloned for this campaign and can be edited independently

When disabled, the campaign uses the tenant's shared templates.

Next steps

• Shift Booking — detailed shift management and booking flow
• Organisation Setup — tenant-level configuration
• Email & Messaging — email template configuration and design
• Salesforce Integration — sync campaign data with your CRM
• Glossary — definitions of all campaign-related terms