For Volunteers

Chapter Emails

To help alleviate some of the administrative work involved in maintaining a chapter membership list, your chapter updated its bylaws in 2016-17 to eliminate membership, making the chapter open to anyone in the chapter’s area.

Because you no longer have a membership list, you can request that an email be sent from the national office to individuals in your chapter area.

When you send email through the national office, you can choose to have your email sent to hundreds of contacts within your state, including all representatives on member rosters, anyone who has made a purchase or registered for an event on the CUPA-HR website, and many individuals at nonmember institutions. For any given chapter area, our database includes 600-2,300 national members and nonmembers who are employed by higher ed institutions in the chapter area. These individuals range from early-career professionals to chief HR officers. The national office is continually updating contact information, so you can be sure the information is current.

When we receive your request, we will:

  1. Schedule the email (we need at least 4 business days’ notice for sending emails)
  2. Proofread your text for spelling and grammar, and
  3. Queue the email to be sent.

We will let you know when the email is ready and the anticipated send date and don’t require your approval prior to sending.

All emails must comply with the CAN-SPAM act.

Ready to send an email? Submit the Chapter Email Request Form

CAN SPAM

CAN SPAM requirements apply to any email whose primary purpose is to advertise or promote a product or service. This includes promoting events, soliciting presentations for conferences and promoting membership. Even emails asking for officer nominations can be considered promotional in nature if the individual receiving the email has not opted into a business relationship with the chapter by attending a chapter event. For this reason, we treat all chapter emails as “promotional” and ensure that they comply with CAN SPAM.

CAN SPAM requirements:

  1. Don’t use false or misleading header information.
  2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines.
  3. Identify the message as an ad. This can be implied, as long as it’s clear and not misleading.
  4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address.
  5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future.
  6. Honor opt‐out requests promptly. Any opt‐out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt‐out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt‐out request within 10 business days. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list.

Email Volume

CUPA‐HR sends daily emails to our member community about various aspects of the association. From the member perspective, all of these emails (including chapter emails) come from CUPA‐HR.

We have found – through testing and analysis of national emails – that reducing volume does not mean reducing impact. When it comes to conferences, for example, programming and deadlines are what drive registration, not multiple emails about the event.

Other Email Services

Chapters are not required to use CUPA-HR for emails.  If you choose to use a different e-mail service—Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, Eventbrite, etc—the national office requests that you use ONLY that service.  CAN SPAM compliance requires diligent maintenance of opt-outs, and using multiple services, including the national office, can compromise that. Chapters who choose not to use the national office’s email service should use their chapter maintained list as their sole method of communication and monitor/manage the CAN SPAM Act requirements at the chapter level.