Families and individuals that are no longer eligible to host, volunteer, or go on an AFS program, or who do not wish to be contacted by AFS are assigned specific statuses and alerts, depending on the situation, to ensure that they are not contacted in the future. This article is designed to help you navigate the alerts by
- identifying what the alert means
- sending emails/pulling lists that exclude the appropriate people
- how to remove alerts
When searching for people in Global Link, those with a subscriber alert will have the alert shown in red in the search results (a), their Subscriber Alerts tab will appear in red (b), and their information will appear in red text in reports/exports (c).
a. 
b. 
c. 
Subscriber Alerts will not prevent automatic system emails from being sent (for example, to registered volunteers letting them know that they need to start the re-registration process or to applicants letting them know that their application has been returned or accepted).
Identifying what the Alerts Mean
To learn more about the various AFS subscriber alerts, click on the Subscriber Alerts tab under any person's record. A full description of each alert can be found here as well as the date any alerts were assigned to the individual and by whom. Note: The person's contact log may contain additional information about why the alert was assigned. Here is what one volunteer's Subscriber Alert tab looks like:
Sending Emails & Pulling lists that Exclude the Appropriate People
Whenever you export a Global Link list or send an email from Global Link, a pop-up box will appear about Subscriber Alerts. Leaving it as-is will mean that any volunteer with a subscriber alert will not receive your message. You can check any boxes that do not pertain to your message. For example, if you are sending a message to all volunteers in your team about an upcoming potluck, you will want to make sure that volunteers with hosting-related subscriber alerts will still get your message about the potluck since your message is not about hosting. You would include these people by checking the boxes related to hosting subscriber alerts like this:
Note that "No Mass Email" means the individual does not want to receive mass marketing messages from AFS-USA, but you can still send that individual a personal or local message.
How to Remove Alerts
On occasion people who have previously asked us not to contact them may change their minds. In order to remove a subscriber alert that the individual no longer wants, please send the details to AskAFS@afsusa.org.