Admin guide · Volunteer teams
Manager Privileges and Volunteer Teams
Understand how volunteers recruit others, receive group access, and help organize your campaign’s outreach.
All users are volunteers. Manager privileges are enabled by default. In UpVote, “manager” describes a set of capabilities; it does not automatically mean someone is campaign staff or a senior team lead.
What manager privileges allow
Build a team
Recruit volunteers
Volunteers with manager privileges can recruit others through the app and build a connected volunteer team.
Work with a group
Receive voter-group access
Admins can assign a volunteer access to a voter group. Having manager privileges does not, by itself, assign a group.
Use these capabilities to share responsibility across your grassroots team. Decide who will help recruits get started, who will coordinate follow-up, and who should have access to each voter group.
Connect volunteers to a team
A volunteer can recruit others from the app’s Volunteers tab. Admins can also organize existing users from the Admin Portal’s Volunteers page using Bulk Actions → Connect to group manager.
For example, connect a set of volunteers to the team lead who will help them with onboarding and regular check-ins. A useful team structure makes it clear who is supporting whom.
See the volunteer-management guide for filters, labels, and bulk actions.
Assign access to voter groups
Admins can add volunteers to groups directly from the Groups page or through the volunteer’s record. Choose people who are well placed to contact that community and keep its records current.
A group might represent a neighborhood or a broader community, such as a congregation, union, or alumni network. Agree on the volunteer’s responsibilities before assigning access.
Follow the Assigning Volunteers to Groups of Voters guide for setup and outreach guidance. Groups can also support a phone campaign.
Review team progress
In the Admin Portal, open Volunteers and switch to Managers. Use the table to review connected users, groups, and available activity metrics.
| What to review | Useful fields |
|---|---|
| Team connections | Direct Connected Users; Direct And Indirect Connected Users. |
| Team contact universe | Contacts From Connected Users, with duplicates removed. |
| Assigned groups | Connected Groups. |
| Recent participation | Last Activity Time. |
| Voting progress | Voted contacts and the percentage voted from connected users, with duplicates removed; Votes In Connected Groups. |
Use Manage Columns to focus the view. Last Activity Time is an activity metric, not a last-login measure. Voting figures depend on the information available in your campaign’s records.
Turn reporting into support. Review the team’s progress, ask what is getting in the way, and offer help with one manageable task. Avoid adding individual contact totals together and treating the result as a unique voter count.
Manage additional permissions separately
Review a volunteer’s permissions in their profile. Where available, additional permissions can include event management, task management, or broader voter access. Enable these according to the person’s responsibilities rather than assuming they come with the manager role.
To update several users, the Volunteers page offers Bulk Actions → Add/Remove Privileges and Turn To Manager. Review the selected users and permissions before confirming.
Keep team communication focused
Use check-ins to help volunteers build their Outreach Lists, begin outreach, and record responses. Use notifications for relevant reminders.
Remember: Because manager privileges are enabled by default, a notification addressed to “Managers” may reach more people than your campaign’s staff or designated team leads.