Communication tools overview

MyTroop has three ways to reach families. Pick whichever matches what you're trying to do.

1. Email digests

Scheduled, automatic summaries of what's coming up. Set a weekly day/time and/or check the monthly box. Members receive a single email listing upcoming events, with no per-event action from you. See Email digests.

Use for: the regular drumbeat — "here's what's coming up this week."

2. Mailing lists

Permanent reply-to-able email addresses that route to a set of members. Examples:

• all@yourtroop.mytroop.org (auto-managed; goes to every member)
• bears@yourtroop.mytroop.org (custom; you create it and pick who's on it)

Anyone authorized to post can email the address from any inbox; the message gets forwarded to every recipient. See Mailing lists.

Use for: ongoing two-way conversations and announcements where members might reply.

3. Per-event notifications

Built into each event page — RSVP reminders, "I have an update for everyone who said yes," etc. These are sent on demand, not scheduled.

Use for: time-sensitive, event-specific messages.

Text messages (SMS)

Event pages can also send a group text. Three things must be true before a member receives one:

1. Your troop turned SMS on. Texting is off until an admin enables it in Admin > Settings. Until then the Send SMS button on event pages is disabled.
2. They opted in. Only members who checked the SMS consent box on their own profile are ever texted. A phone number an admin typed in or imported is never enough on its own — that's a legal requirement, not a preference.
3. Their number is valid. Phone numbers are stored in international format (+16305551234) and are checked when saved. A number the system can't recognize is rejected at save time, and any leftover unrecognizable number is skipped at send time rather than breaking the whole message.

After a send, MyTroop reports exactly what happened: how many messages were delivered, how many the carrier rejected, and how many members were skipped (and why). If it says members were skipped for not opting in, ask them to visit Profile > Edit and check the SMS box.

Sending limits (email and text)

Every troop has a daily and a monthly limit on both texts and email. The limits are generous — a normal troop sending digests and event reminders will never come close — but they exist so that a mistake (a runaway script, or someone getting into a leader's account) can't do real damage before anyone notices.

The reasons differ by channel, which is why the numbers do too:

• Texts cost real money per message, so an accident runs up a bill.
• Email is far cheaper, and its limits are much higher to match. What they protect isn't the bill: a burst of mail to addresses that bounce damages MyTroop's reputation with the mail providers, which quietly pushes every troop's messages toward spam folders. That's harder to undo than a bill.

Three things are worth knowing:

• A send is all-or-nothing. If a message would push you past a limit, none of it goes out — not even the part that would have fit. That's deliberate: a half-delivered troop-wide message, with no way to tell who got it, is worse than one that clearly didn't send.
• Email counts people, not messages. One email to 60 families counts as 60, because that's 60 inboxes.
• There's no way to override it. If you hit a limit, the error tells you exactly when it resets, and in which timezone. Because the email limits are so much higher than the text limits, hitting the text limit still leaves you email as a way to reach families.

Your troop's own daily limit resets at midnight in your troop's timezone, which you set under Settings. There is also a much larger platform-wide limit shared by every troop; that one is measured in UTC, so on the rare occasion you see it, the reset time in the error will say so. If your troop legitimately needs a higher limit, contact your MyTroop administrator — it's a configuration change, not something a leader can switch off.

Which channel for which message?

Situation	Use
Weekly summary of meetings + upcoming	Digest
"Don't forget to bring boots"	Per-event message to RSVP yeses
"Welcome new families!"	Mailing list (all@…)
"Bear den only — bring scout handbook"	Mailing list (bears@…)
Long-form policy announcement	Custom Page + link from a digest