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Overview

When an email to a supporter fails to deliver — a receipt to a recurring donor, for example — WeGive records the failure against that message in the Outbox. There is no real-time alert that fires the moment an email fails. What you can do is build a saved, recurring report of failed messages by filtering the Outbox to errored messages and turning that view into a scheduled export. The report is emailed to whoever you choose on the schedule you pick.

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Step 1: Open the Outbox

In Dashboard v2, open Outbox from the Database section of the left navigation. The Outbox lists every message your organization has sent, including automated messages such as receipts. (You need permission to view messages, and a permission to schedule reports, to complete the steps below.)

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Step 2: Filter to failed messages

Add these filters to the table:
  • Errored: Yes — the core filter. It keeps only messages that recorded a delivery failure.
  • Trigger Event — limit to the automated message you care about, for example your donation receipt event. You can pick more than one.
  • Related Record — limit to messages tied to a particular kind of record, such as a Transaction, Scheduled Donation, or Donor.
  • Date Sent — limit to a time window.
You can combine any of these. Start with Errored: Yes and add only the others you need.

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Step 3: Schedule the export

  1. Click More in the top-right corner of the table and choose Schedule export.
  2. Name the report, for example Failed receipt emails.
  3. Choose a Frequency: Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly.
  4. Set the Starting on date and time.
  5. Turn on Enable notifications and enter the email addresses that should receive the report, separated by commas.
  6. Click Select columns, choose your columns, and confirm.
The filters from your table view are saved with the report and applied again on every run, so each run reflects whatever is errored at that moment. See Creating Scheduled Exports for the full scheduled-export walkthrough.

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Useful columns

  • Supporter ID and the supporter’s name and email fields
  • Sent To — the address the message was sent to
  • Error — the failure reason reported for the message
  • Errored At (UTC) — when the failure was recorded
  • Created At (UTC) — when the message was sent
Good to know: the Error column is left blank for a message that was later delivered, opened, or clicked, even if it had an earlier failure recorded. A message can therefore match Errored: Yes in the Outbox but show a blank Error in the export. Rows with a filled-in Error are the ones that still need follow-up.

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How this differs from Email Bounces

The Email Bounces page (under the Email Health pages) shows addresses that bounced for one custom email domain at a time — you pick the domain from a dropdown. The Outbox report, by contrast, covers every failed message sent by your organization and tells you which supporter and which message each failure belongs to. Use the Outbox report to find who did not get a message; use Email Bounces to review and manage bounce records for a specific sending domain.

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Following up on a failed address

  1. Find the supporter using Supporter ID from the report.
  2. Confirm or correct the email address on their profile (see How to Update a Supporter’s Email Address).
  3. Reach out to the supporter another way, such as a phone call or a message to a second email address, if they still need a copy of the receipt.
Last modified on October 30, 2026