How to email the parents of a children’s group

When there’s news for your children’s or youth groups, the email needs to reach the parents and guardians, not the children. Hubb has this built in: it can swap every child in a selection for the adults in their family, and there are two ways to use it.

Emailing the parents, not the children

1. The quick way is in the mailing wizard. Start a mailing, and on the group-selection step choose the children’s group along with one of the ‘Substitute Children’ options.
2. Continue, and the wizard swaps every child for their guardians. If an orange warning banner appears on the next page, sort out what it flags (usually a family or contact-detail gap) and restart the mailing; with no warnings, carry on and send as normal.
3. The query route is for when you need criteria first, such as reaching the guardians of children with a particular consent given. Build the query, run it, then on the results choose ‘Tasks’, then ‘Family Actions’, then ‘Re-run the query replacing all children with all family adults’.
4. The results now list the adults. Choose ‘Tasks’, then ‘Mailing & Consent’, then ‘Send Mailing’, and write your email as usual.

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Good to know

• There are two flavours of the swap: all family adults reaches every guardian, while first family adult sends one email per household. Pick whichever suits the message.
• This exists because children’s records often have no email address, and shouldn’t be emailed directly anyway; the substitution keeps your communication with families both practical and appropriate.
• Family links are what make it work, so children need to be connected to the adults in their household on their records for the swap to find anyone.