Shared number, many senders
How to let eight committee members contribute without letting eight people broadcast unreviewed — the approval workflow, end to end.
The situation: one association number, eight people who want to send things, and one comms officer who ends up apologising when something goes out at midnight to the wrong audience.
The answer isn't eight numbers. It's roles and approvals.
The structure#
| Who | Role | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| Comms officer | Owner | Everything, including billing |
| Two comms-team members | Admin | Send directly, approve requests, manage groups and tags |
| Committee members (5–8) | Member | Draft anything; sends become requests |
| Treasurer, honorary board | Viewer | Read only |
Two admins minimum. One admin means approvals stall for a week when that person is on a trip, and stalled approvals are how people start asking for their own number.
How it flows#
- A committee member opens Compose or builds an event and hits send or launch.
- Because they're a member on the shared number, nothing goes to WhatsApp. A pending request is created. For an event launch the button then reads "Pending approval" and locks; a Compose request has no such lock, so watch for duplicates in the queue.
- Admins see it in Approvals — the message, the audience it resolves to, the schedule.
- An admin approves, and it proceeds exactly as if they'd written it themselves. Or rejects, and it doesn't.
Approval doesn't skip anything: an approved send still passes caps, cooldown, and quiet hours.
Making it not annoying#
The workflow fails when approval feels like a bureaucracy. Three things fix that:
- Publish a review window. "Requests in before 17:00 go out the same day." A known wait is fine; an unknown one isn't.
- Say why on a rejection. "Move this to Thursday, the gala announcement is Tuesday" is coaching. A silent reject teaches nothing and generates a second identical request.
- Give repeat contributors admin. If someone has had twenty requests approved unchanged, the review is no longer adding anything. Promote them.
What admins should actually check#
A useful review is not proofreading. Four things:
- Audience. Does this need to go to all four year groups, or is it a second-year thing? Over-broad targeting is the most common problem in requests.
- Timing. Look at the calendar. Is something else hitting these groups today?
- First line. It's the only line most people will read. See Writing messages that land.
- One action. Two links and two asks means neither happens.
When a committee should get its own number#
Occasionally the right answer really is a separate number — but only when the committee has a genuinely separate audience, not just its own opinions about messaging. A sports division with its own groups, sponsors, and league contacts qualifies. The events committee announcing to the same year groups as everyone else does not.
Separate numbers mean separate group lists and separate analytics, so you lose the shared view of who's being messaged this week — which is the thing that prevents over-messaging. Number counts per plan are in Plans & billing.
A member with their own number doesn't need approval on it. That's the trade: autonomy in exchange for the coordination you gave up.
Handover#
Boards turn over. At handover:
- Owner transfers to the incoming comms officer.
- Invite the new committee, assign roles.
- Remove the outgoing members — removal revokes their access and any API tokens immediately.
- Keep the number. Groups, tags, campaigns, and analytics all belong to the organisation, not the person, so nothing needs rebuilding. Re-pairing a number, on the other hand, means a fresh warm-up — so don't swap numbers at handover unless you have to.