Understand duplicate phone numbers in a text outreach

For school administrators using GiveCampus Outreach. Controls can differ between the classic email editor and the newer Composer editor.

The GC Outreach texting recipient generator groups source rows by raw phone, normalizes numbers and checks the resulting formatted number before creating included recipients. Differently formatted duplicates can be marked excluded with Duplicate phone number; identical raw numbers are grouped. Review the included/excluded recipient list after processing.

This deduplication is within that outreach's generation flow. It is not a guarantee of one message across separate outreaches, repeated sends, or every VMS/texting product. Shared household numbers also collapse by number, so do not assume each constituent sharing it receives a separate personalized message. Opt-out/validity checks still apply.

How do I text additional phone numbers for a constituent or household?

A constituent-based audience uses the constituent’s selected cell phone; it does not automatically expand every phone number on that record into a separate text recipient. This is different from duplicate-phone checking after recipients are prepared.

To include additional intended recipients directly, open the text outreach’s Recipients → Add Recipients → Upload a Recipients List. Use a CSV with these headers: external_id, first_name, last_name, and phone_number. Put one intended recipient and phone number on each row. Keep the external_id header, but leave its value blank for a person who has no matching constituent ID; do not assign a spouse another person’s ID merely to fill the column.

Wait for processing and review Included and Excluded recipients and their phone numbers. Repeated or differently formatted copies of the same phone number can be deduplicated. Direct recipient uploads do not add extra primary phone numbers to the constituent record, and recipients must still pass phone validation and opt-out checks.