What this helps you do
Audiences group your members so a message reaches the people it concerns. You always have one All Members audience that reaches everyone connected and cannot be deleted. Onboarding seeds a small starter set you can rename, archive or replace: chapter updates, committees and volunteers, events and meetings, renewals, board and governance, and staff. On top of those you build the structure your organization actually runs on: each chapter or section, each committee, each member class or dues tier, each program cohort. Open audiences appear as choices on every member's preferences page; closed ones such as your board or staff list are yours to assign and are never shown to members.
When to use it
Use audiences whenever a message concerns one part of the membership: a chapter meeting that moved, a committee agenda, a notice for members whose dues are due this quarter, a registrant list for one event, a certification deadline that only affects one designation, an opportunity open to one member class, or a board note that should stay in the room.
How to do it
- Open Audiences.
- Create an audience per chapter or section and per committee, named the way members say it: Capital Chapter, Education Committee, Young Professionals.
- Choose how people join each one: members choose it themselves, the organization assigns them, or either. Set Board & Governance, Staff and Renewals to the organization assigns.
- To nest a committee inside a chapter, set Inside audience to the parent. A child audience only accepts people who are in the parent.
- Let members pick their chapters and interests on the preferences page, and use Bulk assign from Connections for the board, committees and a renewal window.
- Decide per audience whether replies to its Blasts are allowed. Leave replies on for committee calls and anything a member will want to ask about.
Example
The Education Committee moves its October meeting to a different building. The chair sends the new room and parking to the Education Committee audience only. The other eight committees and the rest of the membership never see it, so nobody learns to skim past messages from the organization.
Good to know
- A member who belongs to two chapters joins both audiences and gets both sets of updates.
- Sending to All Members asks for a step-up confirmation first.
- Audiences are lists members choose or you assign. There are no rule-based or dynamic audiences, so a renewal window does not fill itself: your membership system knows who is due, you export that list and Bulk assign it, then clear it when the cycle turns.
- The Hub does not hold dues records, renewal dates or member classes. It holds audiences you keep in step with the system that does.
- When a chapter dissolves or a committee finishes its work, archive the audience; the connections stay.