Contact Groups

It's useful to group contacts together for easy management of the names. These groups of contacts are helpful if you want to send an email to all of the people in one group, such as all donors, or all volunteers.

The default groups available to you cover many of the groups that any rescue organization might want to have, such as adopters, donors, and volunteers. There is also a "Do Not Adopt" (DNA) default group.  By adding names to this list, your volunteers can see the names that are flagged as those who should not adopt. If your organization is using the RescueGroups.org Website Service, you can also share this group of names with other RescueGroups.org organizations.

To be able to view contact groups and their members and add and remove contacts to a group, a volunteer must have the role of Contacts Add. For information about and instructions on assigning roles, see Assign Security Roles. 

Add contacts to groups

To add a Contact to a group such as Do Not Adopt, Donors, or Volunteers:

1. Go to Contacts > Contacts List.

2. Locate the contact in the list and click the Edit icon.

3. Select the check box for the group to which you want to add the contact.

4. Click Save.

Organizations using the RescueGroups.org Website Service can choose to share their DNA list. If you would like to share your organization's DNA list with other RescueGroups.org organization, go to Contacts > Settings, and enable the option Share your organization's Do Not Adopt list.

The Volunteer Contact Group is special!

Adding a contact to the Volunteer Contact Group will allow your team to select this specific contact in certain dropdown menus such as assigning submitted forms or sending contact reminders. We strongly suggest that you add any contact to the Volunteer Contact Group if they help you with your RescueGroups.org account management, such as managing submitted forms at your rescue. 

Once you have added a contact record to the Volunteer group, you can always find them by going to Contacts > Volunteers in your RescueGroups.org account.

Add a Contacts Group

To add a contact group, go to Contacts > Groups, and select the Add a Contact Group button at the top of the list. Simply identify the group by name, select whether it is a business or not, then save the group.

View Members of a Contact Group

You can view members of contact groups (and even export this information!) by:

1. Go to Contacts Groups page by going to Contacts > Groups

2. Find the Group you are looking for (ex. Adoptors). Hit the number under the Members column (Ex. 7)

3. Then you are taken to a table that displays all members of that group. You can use the options dropdown to export data if desired.

Example: If you look at the first example image below, if we wanted to see our Adopter group we would hit the 7. The second example image shows the 7 members of the group including links to their contact pages. The options dropdown at the left also allows you to export this to a spreadsheet program of choice if desired.

Remove or Delete Members of a Contact Group

There are two ways to remove a contact from a group.

Option 1: From the Contact Page

To remove a contact from a group first location your contact, usually via a search.  Then, using the blue links at the top find the Groups link. Select that link.

Check the box beside the group you want to remove from the contact and use the Actions Dropdown to select remove. Then click OK on the next popup.

Option 2: From the Group list

Once on RescueGroups.org go to Contacts > Groups then select the list you want to remove members from. Click on the Number next to that group. This will pull up a page with members of that group. Check the box beside the contact you want to remove and use the Actions Dropdown to select remove. Then click OK on the next popup.

Delete a Contact Group

If you no longer need a custom Contact Group that your team previously created, you can delete it. First, you need to be sure that no contact records are associated with that group. If there are any contacts, you can use the instructions above to remove or delete members of that Contact Group. Then, in the Contacts Group data table, use the instructions below to delete a custom group.

1. Be sure to start from the Contact Groups page by going to Contacts > Groups

2. Open the specific Group page that you intend to delete by clicking on the Group name (not the Edit icon). See screenshot below for clarification. 

     3. On the Group page, click on the Delete button under the Group description, as shown below.