Advocacy and Outreach

In January 2026, we released improvements to our advocacy tool making it easier to identify, invite, and communicate advocates with its new tie in to GC Outreach and GC Intelligence.

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📽️ Watch: Product Office Hours -- Advocacy Recruitment & Communication workflow.

To get started with campaign advocacy, head to the Advocacy > Advocates tab of your campaign's settings. 

 

Adding Advocates

Click the Add Potential Advocates button to add advocates.

• Not Invited: This person is on your advocate list but hasn’t yet been invited to participate in the campaign.

• Active: This advocate has engaged with the campaign by clicking links, referring gifts, adding a personal plea, or offering a match or challenge.

• Upload List of Advocates: Requires you to upload a CSV file with the following columns: external_id, first_name, last_name, and email_address.

You'll see options to use smart segment advocates, start from an existing segment, upload a list of advocates, or add one-by-one depending on your needs.

 

• Using a Smart Segment requires that you've uploaded data via the School-Level Data Importer. 
• Starting from Existing Segments allow you to choose from event data, pre-built segments, a custom segment, or a smart segment. 
• Lastly, you can manually add a Single New Advocate

 

 

Advocacy Statuses

The Advocacy Status can help you determine the progress of advocates and who you should communicate with. Advocates will have one of five potential statuses:

1. Inactive (Previous Advocate): This person previously advocated on another campaign for your school, so they are a great choice for using as an advocate this year! They have not yet been active on this campaign.
2. Inactive (No Previous Advocacy): This is a person has been added to the list but hasn't advocated for your school before, and isn't yet active on this campaign.
3.  
4. Removed (Active Advocate): This advocate has been removed from the public-facing campaign but generated some amount of clicks or gifts.
5. Inactive (Logged In): This advocate has a GiveCampus account, but hasn't taken any action on the campaign yet. 

You can filter and send Outreach communication to each status individually, if you'd like.

 

 

Communicating with Advocates through Outreach

Use the filters to determine which group of folks you want to communicate with and click the 'Send Outreach' button based on the folks that are selected. The 'Send Outreach' buttons will indicate how many folks are selected to be sure you've selected the right group.

From there you'll be able to begin setting up your outreach by creating the name, method of outreach, and the messaging. You have 3 options for building out your messaging:

1. Start from Scratch
2. Start from a Template
3. Generate Email with AI

 

After you've chosen the type and format of the outreach, you'll be taken to Outreach where you can continue to build, edit, and send the outreach.

 

Important Merge Tokens & Links to Include

When drafting your Advocate Outreach, you'll want to utilize the $Advocate_First_Name$ Merge token to customize your Outreach. This can be found by clicking the merge token drop down in the Outreach builder.

 

Additionally you'll want to include an Advocate Link by utilizing the 'GC Links' button in the Outreach Builder. You'll be able to select the Link Style (Button or Link), the Campaign Destination, and the type of Advocacy Link depending on your Outreach goal.

 

Check out Building Emails in GC Outreach for additional details on formatting your Outreach.

 

FAQ's

Can advocacy outreaches be schedule-sent?

Yes! And if those are filtered by advocacy status, those lists are dynamic. This means that if you schedule send to 'active' advocates, and new advocates become active, it'll automatically update that recipient list before sending. This allows you to prep communication ahead of your big day!

 

Do advocates need a GiveCampus account to advocate?

No, advocates don't need a GiveCampus account to advocate! Folks can share out their links and will still be credited for gifts without an account. Advocates will only need to create an account if they want to create a personal video. 

 

Can I remove an advocate?

Yes! Select the advocate using the checkbox next to their name and find the 'Remove Advocates' button at the top of the page.

Can I start this Outreach flow from Outreach instead of Advocacy?

No, you'll want to start by creating your advocate list in Advocates and then moving into Outreach, don't create an Outreach first and then add your advocate recipients. This functionality was built around the campaign so you'll want to start there!

 

Can I add recipients to an email generated via the campaign advocacy workflow once I'm in Outreach?

 Yes! We will auto-generate the tokens for you and add them to the campaign as potential advocates once the email is sent. This means, even if you add additional recipients to your emails, all of the relevant advocacy links and tokens will be created and sent to them. No more worries about adding additional recipients but having them receive blank templates!

 

I'm not seeing this new advocacy format on my campaign. Why is that?

• Any new campaign (As of 1/14)
• Any newly cloned campaign 
• Campaigns in Draft
• Campaigns that are live but don't have any advocates yet.
• It was not enabled for campaigns with active advocates prior to 1/14. If you'd like to enabled for any campaign mid-stream, please reach out to our team and we'd be happy to make that switch!