Roles are a grouping of permissions that determine “what a volunteer can see", "what a volunteer can do", and "who a volunteer can see”. With Constituent Cohorts the “who a volunteer can see” permission is more configurable than ever!
Building a Cohort
Cohorts are a functionality available exclusively to Administrators. When logged in as an Administrator,
Navigate to Manage Volunteers in the left navigation bar, then click Cohorts.
head to the “Manage Volunteers" section from the left navigation bar > Cohorts” tab. To create new cohort, click “Create New Cohort” in the top right corner. Cohorts are comprised of a few key elements:Condition - these are categories by which you’re defining the groups of constituents. Conditions will appear dynamically based on what information is sent across in the data files you share with GiveCampus. If provided, the following are the available conditions: Activity, Affiliation, Ask Amount, Class Year, Donor Status, Home Address (state), and Segment Code (which is a custom data point defined in your onboarding or during a reconfiguration).
Groups - groups allow you to combine conditions that do not impact other elements of the cohort logic. For example, if you had the following cohort logic:
The result of the above would be all parents, all alumni, all of 2024 and all of 1980. However, by using groups, you could have this cohort logic:
The results are now much more precise, in that the cohort would include only Alumni with a year of 1980 and Parents with a year of 2024.
Groups are a fantastic tool for combining many different conditions without needing to create a different cohort for each related condition. One creative use that we’ve seen is to use groups to create differentiated leadership levels. For example, if you’d like to build a cohort of leadership level prospects, but your leadership levels are tiered based on class year, you could create a cohort with a group for each year range and the associated Ask Amount that qualifies that year range as a leadership prospect.
And/Or - Within Constituent Cohorts, there are two different types of logic that you can apply to combine conditions “And” or “Or”. In Constituent Cohorts, these read as “At least one condition must be met”, which is the “Or” logic; and as “All conditions must be met”, which is the “And” logic.
Generally, an “All conditions must be met” will return a narrower pool of constituents while “Any of the conditions must be met” will return a broader group of constituents. For example
The above Constituent Cohort uses the “All Conditions must be met” logic, so to appear in this Cohort, the constituent must both be an alumnus/a AND be in the Class of 1980.
Meanwhile, if the same conditions are combined with “At least one condition must be met”:
This Constituent Cohort would include all alumni and all members of the class of 1980.
Applying Cohorts to Roles
Once a Cohort is built, you will then be able to build out the “Who this role can see” permissions for any Volunteer Role. On the “Roles” page, you’ll see a “Role Builder” that looks similar to the Constituent Cohort builder. From this Role Builder, you can determine which Cohorts a Volunteer Role should see, should not see, and if there are any class-year permissions that need to be taken into consideration.
If your role should be able to see all constituents in GiveCampus Volunteer Management, you can select the checkbox to allow for this permission:
Once you uncheck this box, you will see the role builder options display. Conditions for Role builder are around three areas:
- Cohorts
- Preferred Class Year
- Affiliation Year (if applicable)
As with Constituent Cohorts, in Role Builder you can use groups as well as AND/OR logic to create exactly the permissions that you'd like to enable for your Volunteers. A very common combination is to select a Cohort and make it such that volunteers can only see constituents within the Cohort who share their same class year.
Once you have configured your Role Builder conditions, click "Save Role" at the bottom of the Roles page.
Using cohorts to exclude constituents from role visibility
In addition to targeting which constituents a volunteer sees, cohorts can also restrict role visibility. When configuring a role in the Role Builder, you can exclude entire cohorts so that those constituents do not appear in volunteer searches, pickers, or filters. You can also combine multiple cohorts to create precise visibility rules.
FAQ — Can a constituent belong to more than one cohort?
Yes. A constituent can belong to multiple cohorts simultaneously. Each cohort evaluates its conditions independently, so a constituent appears in every cohort where they meet the defined criteria.
FAQ — How can one person end up in multiple cohorts?
Each cohort is evaluated separately against your constituent data. If a constituent’s record satisfies the conditions for more than one cohort, they will automatically be included in each without any changes required to your data files.
FAQ — What is the Segment Code condition and how does it affect cohort membership?
The Segment Code is a custom data point set up during onboarding or a subsequent reconfiguration. It supports semicolon-delimited values in a single column. When a constituent’s import data includes multiple segment names separated by semicolons, the system treats each value as separate, matching any cohort that targets one of those segment names.
FAQ — Do we need to change our data files for multi-cohort membership when using standard conditions?
No. For cohorts based on standard conditions (such as Affiliation, Activity, or Class Year), the existing data is sufficient. The query builder evaluates each cohort independently, allowing a constituent to match multiple cohorts automatically when their data meets several conditions.
FAQ — Where do I build cohorts and apply them to roles?
- Build cohorts: Navigate to Manage Volunteers in the left navigation bar, then click Cohorts.
- Apply cohorts to roles: Open the Roles page and use the Role Builder to include or exclude specific cohorts for each volunteer role. You can combine cohorts with Preferred Class Year and Affiliation Year rules using AND/OR logic to control which constituents each role can see.
FAQ — Common scenarios and tips
- Restricting visibility to constituents who share the volunteer’s class year: In the Role Builder, combine the Cohort condition with the Preferred Class Year condition using an AND group.
- Combining multiple similar groups into one cohort: Use Cohort Groups with OR logic to consolidate related class years or criteria into a single cohort.
- Driving cohort membership from external data: Employ the Segment Code by including a semicolon-delimited list of segment names in your import so that the cohort query matches those values.
Example: Excluding ‘Do Not Solicit’ constituents from Class Agents
• Create a “Do Not Solicit” cohort using your school’s designated data field. • In the Class Agents role, configure the Role Builder to exclude constituents who are in this cohort. • In the Class Officers role, omit the exclusion condition so that these constituents remain visible for stewardship purposes.
Result: Class Agents will not see “Do Not Solicit” constituents, while Class Officers retain access.
You can add multiple exclusion conditions to further refine a role’s audience. Start with the minimal inclusion criteria and then add exclusions to precisely tailor what each role can view.
Viewing and Modifying a Constituent Cohort
Once your Cohort has been created, you can view the Cohort at any time from the "Constituent Cohort" page. Clicking on the Cohort name from the Constituent Cohorts page will allow you to view the constituents who comprise that Cohort along with some basic information.
If you'd like to make changes to the Cohort, you can click "Modify Cohort" from the main Constituents Cohort page. Changes made to the Cohort will update the "Who this role can see" permissions for any Role using that cohort.
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