1. Check the message’s status is Live
A Triggered Message only sends when its status is set to Live. New messages are created as Draft by default and won’t fire until you explicitly switch them over. This is the single most common reason a message “never sends” — double-check the status before looking at anything else.2. Review the trigger filters (the “when” conditions)
Every Triggered Message has its own trigger conditions — the rules that decide which occurrences of the event actually count. If a condition is too narrow, or references a value that doesn’t match how the event actually happens in your account, the message can sit Live and correctly attached to the right event, but never actually have anything qualify. Open the message, review each trigger condition, and confirm it matches real data from a recent occurrence of that event.3. Review the audience filters (the “who” conditions) — separately
Trigger conditions and audience conditions are two independent checks, and both have to pass for a message to send. It’s easy to confirm the trigger side looks right and stop there — but an audience filter that doesn’t match any of your actual supporters will block the send just as completely as a bad trigger condition. Review the audience rules on their own, even if the trigger conditions already look correct.4. Only one message fires per event, by default
If you have more than one Triggered Message set up on the same event (for example, a specific message for one case and a more general message as a fallback), WeGive only sends ONE of them per event — it does not send every message whose conditions happen to be true. WeGive checks your messages on that event in a set order (their hierarchy) and sends the first one that matches; a message later in the order is skipped once an earlier one has already won, even if that later message’s own conditions are also true. This means: if the message you expect to fire isn’t first in the hierarchy, and an earlier message on the same event is matching first, your message is being correctly skipped, not broken. Check your message’s position in the hierarchy relative to any other messages on the same event, and reorder them (or narrow the earlier message’s conditions) if the wrong one is winning. A message with no trigger conditions set at all counts as matching everything. If an earlier message in the hierarchy has no trigger conditions configured, it will win over every more specific message below it in the order, regardless of how carefully those other messages are set up. If a more specific message never fires and a broader message on the same event always does instead, check whether that broader message actually has trigger conditions — not just whether they’re narrow.Do you actually need two messages to send at once?
If your goal is for two different messages to both go out off the same event — say, a donor-facing thank-you and a separate internal notification, each with its own rules — ordinary Triggered Messages on the same event won’t do this; only one will ever send. For this, use a Journey instead: a Journey can dispatch your normal triggered message and separately route a second, differently-ruled send off the same starting event, without the “only one wins” behavior described above.Quick checklist
- Is the message’s status Live?
- Do the trigger conditions actually match a recent real occurrence of the event?
- Do the audience conditions, checked separately, match your real supporters?
- Is another message on the same event ahead of this one in hierarchy, and is it matching first (especially one with no trigger conditions at all)?
- If you need two independent sends off one event, is a Journey the right tool instead of two Triggered Messages?
Still not firing after working through this list? Reach out to the WeGive support team with the message name and the event it’s attached to, and we’ll dig in with you.