There are several reasons why users may not receive emails generated by VolunteerHub.
Before you can determine why a user didn't receive the email, first make sure the email was sent in the first place. You can do this by clicking on the user's name, then clicking on the Activity tab. If an email was sent to the user, it will appear in the log (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The email activity will show the date and time as well as which admin sent the message.
If you do not see a log of the email in question, that means that no email was sent to that user. Check reason numbers 5 and 6 below for a potential solution.
Note that log entries for event registration confirmation emails (like the one above) are not updated when the event details (e.g., name, date, times, etc.) are updated, as these entry logs show the body text of the email that was actually sent to the user. On the other hand, changes to the event name, date and times are reflected in the activity log entry showing that the user was "Registered for an event."
Below is a comprehensive list of the most common reasons users may not receive an email from the system. If you have checked ALL of the below potential causes and still cannot determine why your users have not received emails from the system, please send a message to VolunteerHub Support by clicking on the Send us a message button in the top-right corner of this page.
1. The user's account does not have an associated email address.
If the user's account was created by an administrator, the Email field may have been left blank when creating the account. To ensure the user receives emails from VolunteerHub, be sure to go back into the user's account and add an email address by navigating to the Users page, clicking on the user's name and adding an email address in the Email field.
2. The user "opted out" of that email type
There are three type of emails volunteers can choose whether they'd like to receive:
- Event registration, confirmation emails
- Post-event thank-yous
- Newsletters and announcements
By default, all new volunteers are opted in to all three, but volunteers can choose to opt out. Click here for more information on how volunteers can manage their email notification settings.
3. Automatic emails are not enabled for the event.
If you believe the user should have received an automatic reminder or thank-you email, check the event’s email settings to ensure that those emails are enabled for that specific event. To do so, click on the name of the event and click on the Edit button. Scroll down and make sure the checkboxes under the Reminder Email and Thank-You Email settings are checked.
4. The user doesn't belong to the group you emailed.
If you are sending a manual email to a group of users through the User Group or User filter email functionality, double-check that the user does, in fact, belong to the group you are emailing. It may be that the user is no longer a member of the user group you sent the email to, or that the user cancelled his or her registration for an event in the event group list you attempted to email.
5. The email was blocked by the user's spam filter.
When troubleshooting email issues, you should have your users check their spam or junk folder to ensure the communication was not mistakenly labelled as spam. Emails sent from your VolunteerHub site will appear as being sent from the name of the administrator that sent the message with "via VolunteerHub" written after. To save time, they can search their spam or junk folder for the from name, the subject of the email (for manual emails) or for the name of the event (for automated event emails).
If the user finds the email in the spam or junk folder, have them mark the message as “not spam” and change their settings to accept emails from that email address going forward. If the email was blocked entirely and doesn't appear in their spam folder, ask the volunteer to whitelist emails from the address "b02@b.volunteerhub.com."