Running a popup (the full guide)

A popup is a place and time where supporters come to pick up a free lawn sign. This is the big-picture guide that ties the whole thing together — from setting one up to handing out signs on the day.

1. Create it

In the sidebar, open Popups, then click Create a popup. Depending on the current rollout, you will see either one page with Location, Schedule, Instructions, and optional Volunteer times, or four wizard steps: Location, Dates, Details, and Review. The one-page editor finishes with Create popup; the wizard finishes with Confirm & create popup. Full details are in Creating a popup.

2. It goes live on Forever Canadian

You don't have to do anything else — your popup publishes itself to the public website. On the popup's page, the status moves from Publishing… to Live on Forever Canadian, usually within a minute or two. After that, your popup shows on the public map and supporters can open its page to reserve a sign.

3. Share it

If creator sharing emails are enabled and your account has a valid email, you may also receive ready-to-share material by email. The on-page sharing tools below are the reliable place to find your popup links and code.

Once the popup is live on Forever Canadian, its page shows the Share your popup box with your Poster code and links to the Public page and Poster page, plus a QR code supporters can scan at your table to reserve a sign. To promote it online, copy the Public page link and post it. (The QR Codes page under Resources is the whole campaign's code, not your popup's — your popup's own code is the one on the share card.)

4. Volunteers RSVP — supporters reserve

These are two different things, and it helps to keep them straight:

• An RSVP is a volunteer telling you whether they can help. When popup volunteer times are available, the choices are I can help, Maybe, and Can't; I can help requires an available shift when the popup has volunteer times. While that workflow is unavailable, the legacy choices are Yes, I'll be there, Maybe, and No, and popup shift rows stay hidden. Email RSVP links retain their existing labels and behavior. See RSVPing to a popup.
• A reservation is a member of the public reserving a lawn sign on the Forever Canadian website. You can't make those for them — you just watch the counts come back.

5. Hand out signs

At your table, you hand out signs and record each one. The step-by-step is in Handing out lawn signs. Afterwards, the Reservations on Forever Canadian card on your popup's page shows an All dates summary and a separate row for every current or upcoming date, including dates with zero reservations. Open Past dates or Cancelled dates, when present, to see past or cancelled activity without mixing it into today's planning.

Coming, Maybe, and No are the latest recorded public reservation responses. On a past date, No can also mean the reservation was completed; it does not always mean the supporter declined. Signs handed off is the separate count of completed pickups attributed to that date. The All dates totals are calculated independently, so don't add the date rows together to recreate them.

6. Change or take it down

If you've closed the tab, you can always get back to a popup: in the sidebar, open Popups, then My popups, expand the popup you want, and click Manage Popup to open its management page.

From there, click Edit popup to reopen either the one-page editor or the four-step wizard and use Save changes; use Adjust signs available to change the sign count; or Cancel popup to take it down (supporters with the link see a friendly "no longer scheduled" message). See Editing a popup.

In the one-page editor, the action area reports Unsaved changes, Saving…, or All changes saved. Validation issues appear under Check the highlighted information, with links back to the affected fields. If you try to follow another link before saving, choose Stay or Discard and leave. Refreshing or closing the browser may show the browser's own warning. If the popup saves but its volunteer times do not, correct the issue and use Save changes again; the retry saves only the remaining volunteer-time work.

When supporter-impact review is available, the one-page editor's Instructions section — or the wizard's Review step — groups fields into Public (shown to supporters on Forever Canadian) and Team only (visible only to your team). If you change the popup name, address, city, postal code, an existing date or time, or remove a date that has reservations, Save changes checks the supporter impact. If nobody is affected, the change saves without a confirmation step. Otherwise, the page shows Review supporter impact with an aggregate estimate using the wording “Up to … reservation holders may receive email and/or text.” This is a potential audience, not a delivery guarantee.

Choose Go back to keep editing, or Save and notify to confirm the exact changes shown. If the page says it could not check the supporter impact, use Try again or Go back; there is no save-anyway action. If the popup changes after the impact check, the draft stays in place and you must review the impact again. A Team-only change can skip the public update when that capability is available. The one-page editor stays open and its saved-state message says how many popup dates were saved and whether public sync was needed or queued. The wizard returns to the management page, which reports either Team-only save complete. No public update was requested. or Popup saved; public update queued. A queued update is not a claim that supporters received a message.

When date-specific instructions are available, open Edit popup and use Instructions in the one-page editor or Details in the wizard. Keep the shared instructions in Public note for all dates (optional) and Team-only note for all dates (optional). Turn on Set different instructions for individual dates only when a date needs its own directions. This reveals Public instructions by date and Team-only instructions by date. Leave an individual-date field blank to fall back to the matching all-dates note. When public date-specific display is available on Forever Canadian, a nonblank public instruction follows the date the supporter selects. Until then, Forever Canadian keeps showing the popup-level public note instead. Team-only instructions never leave the team app.

When private-note quick save is available, the management page also shows a Volunteer note box with Only your team sees this underneath. Change the note and click Save note. A successful save reports Saved for … dates. because the same private instruction is saved to every active date in that popup. If the saved value is already current, the page reports No changes to save. Use Cancel before saving to restore the last saved value.

If saving fails, your typed note stays in the box so you can correct or retry it. After a successful save, refreshing or reopening the management page loads the saved note. When the quick-save box is not available, use Edit popup to change the volunteer note with the rest of the popup details.

When volunteer-time management is available, the management page shows Volunteer times. Use Add time on each date to set a label, start, end, optional capacity, and volunteer instructions. Copy to selected dates copies one date's schedule to the dates you check. Finish with Save volunteer times. The one-page popup editor can also include volunteer times with Add volunteer time, using Label, Starts, Ends, and optional Capacity and Volunteer instructions (optional) fields. If a removal or time/capacity change affects existing signups, the page shows the aggregate impact first; Save and notify is required before the change proceeds.

Older single-date one-off popups use the same Edit, adjust, and cancel controls, but they do not show the quick-save box. Edit opens the single-event form, where you can change the volunteer note, and there is no Add another date option.