Announcements by email and text

Announcements (on the dashboard) send one message to many members at once — a closure, a newsletter, a call for a working bee. Pick an audience, write a subject and message, attach files if you like, and send. Use Send test to me first to see the email exactly as members will.

Who it goes to

Audience — all households, current members, memberships expiring within 30 days, or members who lapsed in the last year. A multi-branch library can narrow any of these to the households that borrowed or returned a toy at one branch in the last 12 months.
Email goes to every adult in those households who gets email from you. Party-hire hirers are never included.
Copy emails puts the audience's addresses on your clipboard for your own email program. Each copy is recorded in the activity log.

Sending by text as well

If your library sends texts, an announcement can go out as a text too. Turn it on once: under Settings → Notifications, open Library announcement → SMS settings and tick Send SMS for this trigger. The composer then shows Also send as a text.

One text per household. It goes to the main adult if they have said yes to texts and have a mobile number. Otherwise it goes to another adult in the household who has. If two households share a mobile, it gets one text.
Who has said yes. This is the same Text me reminders and library news choice members make in the portal (staff can set it on the household's People tab). Members who haven't said yes get the email only. Texts come from the sender name "ToyHive" and can't be replied to, so members turn texts off in the portal, not by replying STOP.
Write a short text of its own. The box starts with your subject. Your library name is put in front, because the text arrives from "ToyHive". You can change that wording under Settings → Notifications, where {{body}} stands for what you type. The counter shows the length and the number of segments. One text is 160 characters. Longer texts are sent in 153-character segments, and a single emoji or curly quote cuts that to 70. Each segment uses one text from your balance.
Attachments stay with the email. A text can't carry them.
The cost is shown before you send. For example, "214 texts × 1 segment = 214 from your balance of 1,000 (≈ $23.54)". The confirm step shows it again. The price is the average of the text bundles you hold. If your balance can't cover the whole send, ToyHive refuses it, so nobody gets half an announcement. Buy more under Settings → Billing.
Text test to me sends the text to the mobile number on your own account. It uses one text and counts towards the 5 test texts your library can send a day.
Texts follow the same rules as reminders: none go out between 8pm and 8am (they wait until morning), and nothing is sent while notifications are paused. The balance is checked when you press Send, but each text is paid for when it actually goes out, so if you send in the evening and overnight reminders use up the last of your balance, the remaining texts are skipped (those members still get the email).

Each sent announcement in Previously sent shows how many emails and texts it queued. Every message is listed under Settings → Notifications → History.