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Ministry Overview
Click any card below to jump to that section.
Volunteers
— verified
— total signed up
— awaiting verification
Inmates
— available
— total
— matched
— reserved
Pending
— items
— match requests
— intake
This Week
— letters logged
— new matches
— new volunteers
All Sections
Every admin tool, in one place.
Analytics
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🚀 Recruitment Dashboard
Daily signup trend, source attribution, and conversion funnel. Use this during recruitment campaigns to see what's working in real time.
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📊 My Work
See what's happening in the ministry and track your own work. Use the dropdown to switch between daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly views.
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Correspondence Requests
| Volunteer | Inmate | State | Via | Requested | Status | Actions | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Volunteers
🟢 Green = active within 30 days · 🟡 Yellow = 31–60 days · 🔴 Red = 60+ days. Click any row to see full timeline and send a nudge email.
| Name | Health | Country | Verified | Slots | Active | Pending | Last Login | Last Activity | Registered | Remove | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Inmates
| Name | ID # | SID # | State | Via | Status | Slots | Letter | Actions |
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Add New Inmate
Save time by scanning the inmate's letter when you create them. Inquiry letters keep the inmate in Pending Intake. Intro letters create them as Active on the public site.
If the letter pasted below is in Spanish (or another language), set this. Volunteers can then translate it to English on the public site.
💡 Don't have an intro letter yet? Leave this blank. The inmate will be auto-flagged as Pending Intake — they won't appear on the public site until you fill this in later. You can find them in the 📋 Pending Intake panel.
➕ Add New Volunteer
Use this to add a volunteer who signed up offline (in person, by phone, etc). The volunteer will be marked as email-verified immediately — no verification email is sent. If you leave the password blank, a temporary one is generated and the volunteer can reset via "Forgot Password" on the login page.
📋 Pending Intake
New inmates awaiting an intro letter or pending review. Once their intro arrives, approve them to add them to the public pool.
ℹ️ What does Pending Intake actually do?
When an inmate is added to the platform — by you, by a coordinator, or via bulk import — they start with intake_status = 'pending_intro'. While they're in this state:
- They do NOT show up on the public Volunteer Dashboard, so volunteers can't request them yet.
- They do show up here, on this Pending Intake panel, where you can see who needs their intro letter.
- You can print or send the templated intro request (the one that asks the inmate to write back with a few sentences about themselves).
Once a real intro letter arrives (typed in by you or pulled in by OCR), the system flips them to intake_status = 'active' and they appear on the public dashboard for matching. After that, they're in the regular Inmates list.
Stale flag: if it's been 3+ template requests or 120+ days without an intro, they're marked stale here so you can decide whether to keep waiting or remove them.
0 pending intake
· 0 stale (3+ requests or 120+ days)
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📝 Pending Intro Letters
Inmates currently waiting without an intro letter. They're hidden from the public letters page until a letter is scanned. Click Scan Now to jump straight into the Letter Scanner pre-filled with that inmate, or Edit to paste a letter manually.
| Name | ID # | State | Via | Status | Days Waiting | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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📨 Forwarded Letters — Review Queue
When a volunteer forwards an inmate's E-platform reply to letters@penpalministry.org, it lands here. The system tries to auto-match it to one of the volunteer's active assignments. Approve to add the letter to that assignment's correspondence timeline (direction: received). Reject if it's spam, a false positive, or unintended.
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Messages & Issue Reports
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📬 Mailbox
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📭
Select a thread on the left to view it.
Or click + Log intermediated mail at the top to record a USPS / e-message you relayed.
ℹ️ How does Mailbox work?
Inbound emails: When someone sends an email to anything-@penpalministry.org (info@, contact@, hello@, etc.), it lands here as a new thread. You can reply directly — your reply will be sent from noreply@penpalministry.org.
Intermediated mail: When you receive a USPS letter from an inmate and forward the contents to their volunteer (or vice versa), use the + Log intermediated mail button to record what you relayed. The system threads everything by volunteer↔inmate pair so you can review the full back-and-forth in one place.
Threading: Replies stay grouped with the original thread (matched by message-id headers, with a 60-day subject + sender fallback). Threads auto-archive when you click 🗄️ Archive.
🚨 Issue Reports
Volunteer-reported issues only. Filter by severity, status, or date. Resolved issues are excluded from the Monday digest email.
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🛑 Removal & Add Requests
Two queues here: Removals are coordinator-flagged volunteers you'd remove from the ministry. Inmate Adds are volunteer requests to be paired with an at-capacity inmate (the volunteer's slot stays free until you approve). Approving an add-request silently auto-bumps the inmate's max-slots to fit. Reject requires a note — the volunteer sees it in their email.
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📣 Social Media
Compose once, post everywhere. Facebook + Instagram auto-post via the Meta Graph API; X / TikTok / YouTube open a pre-filled compose window for one-tap posting.
🔗 Channel Links
Public URLs for the ministry's accounts. Used in email footers, share screens, and the dashboard. Leave a field blank if the account doesn't exist yet.
✍️ New Post
Instagram requires an image. Facebook works with or without.
📜 Recent Posts
💬 Testimonials
Volunteer-submitted stories. Approved testimonials appear publicly at /testimonials.html. Pending ones are awaiting your review. Use + Add Testimonial to enter testimonials you received offline (email, letter, conversation) or to add inmate-side stories.
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Coordinator Accounts
Add New Coordinator
Minimum 8 characters.
Existing Coordinators
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📊 Coordinator Activity
Per-coordinator activity stats. Use the time range to scope back further. Click a coordinator card to see their full action timeline.
📨 Weekly Digest Email
Auto-emails Richard a coordinator activity summary every Monday at 10am ET. Click below to send a manual run right now.
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📈 Match Analytics
Insights into match performance, correspondence health, and conversion. Cached for 10 minutes — click Refresh to bust the cache.
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📢 Send a Broadcast Email
Send a custom email to a group of volunteers. Bounced and paused accounts are automatically skipped. Use {first_name} in the body to personalize.
Picks any saved template.
{first_name} is filled per-recipient when sending.
Will send to — recipient(s).
Recent broadcasts
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⚙️ Ministry Settings
Configure ministry-wide settings. Changes appear immediately on the volunteer dashboard.
Volunteer community link
Optional Discord, Slack, Facebook Group, or other community URL. Shows as a card on the volunteer dashboard so active volunteers can connect with each other.
Onboarding video URL
Optional 60-second welcome video URL (YouTube unlisted, Loom, Vimeo, etc). When set, new volunteers receive an email from Richard with the video 24–72 hours after signup. Leave blank to disable the email.
📬 AR/TX Clearinghouse Addresses
Texas and Arkansas now centralize all inmate mail through PO Box clearinghouses. This button rewrites the Physical Mailing Address of every Texas and Arkansas inmate in the database to the current clearinghouse format (with the inmate's name + ID# interpolated in).
- Arkansas: "First Last / AR-DOC ID#: nnnnn / PO Box 25918 / Tampa, FL 33622"
- Texas: "First Last / TDCJ Digital Mail Processing Center / ID#: nnnnn / PO Box 660400 / Dallas, TX 75266-0400"
⚠️ Heads up: This OVERWRITES every existing AR + TX address. The previous address is saved into a backup column on the record (physical_address_pre_clearinghouse) so it can be inspected later, but the visible address field will change. Future inmates added in TX or AR will get the autofill automatically via the Add Inmate / Edit Inmate forms.
🤖 Claude API health check
Tests whether ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is set on Railway and the Claude API is responding. Used by translation, OCR letter scanner, and several other features. If this fails, those features will all fail.
🎥 Training Videos
Add YouTube or Vimeo videos to the public Training Library at /training.html. Volunteers see them on the public training page.
Add a video
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✉️ Email Templates
Customize the subject line and body of system emails. Use placeholders like {first_name} to personalize. Templates without overrides use the built-in defaults. Click "Populate all templates" to load Richard-approved canonical copy for all 12 templates at once (won't overwrite anything you've already customized).
💡 You can't break anything from here. Editing a template only changes how that email looks — the system won't crash, no data will be lost, and you can always click "Reset to default" to undo. If you forget what a placeholder like
{first_name} means, the editor below shows the full list when you select a template.
Select a template from the left to edit.
🎄 Holiday Card Reminder
Sends a warm reminder email to volunteers with active matches, encouraging them to send a holiday card to their pen pal. Includes their pen pal names and handling tips. The cron runs automatically every November 15. Use the buttons below for off-schedule sends.
Manual trigger
Sends to all verified, non-paused, non-bounced volunteers who have at least one active match.
📅 Auto-schedule: Runs every November 15 at 9am ET automatically. Use this manual trigger for early sends, late sends, or special occasions (Thanksgiving, Easter, etc.) where the holiday message would still be relevant.
📄 Annual Impact Report
Auto-generated end-of-year stats. Use your browser's Print dialog to save as PDF for sharing or filing.
Pick a year to begin…
🔐 Two-Factor Authentication
Add an extra layer of security to the super admin login. After enabling, every admin login will require a 6-digit code from an authenticator app (Google Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, etc.).
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💾 Database Backup
🛡️ How your ministry's data is protected
The ministry's database is backed up automatically — there are three layers:
- Railway (your hosting provider) runs automatic daily Postgres snapshots. You can roll back to any of the past few days from the Railway dashboard if something goes catastrophically wrong.
- Backblaze B2 (cloud storage) holds every scanned letter PDF and image file long-term. Files are never deleted unless an admin explicitly removes them.
- Manual backup (below) lets you download a full JSON snapshot of every database table to your own computer whenever you want. Save it to Google Drive, a USB stick, anywhere you trust.
📊 Database health
Current row counts across the main tables. If these numbers look way off from what you remember, something may be wrong.
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📥 Download a manual backup
Click the button below to download a JSON file containing every row from every important table. The file is timestamped. Save it somewhere safe — Google Drive, an external hard drive, a USB stick. Doing this monthly is a good habit.
Note: the JSON file does NOT include the actual PDF/image files (those are huge — they live on Backblaze B2 already). The file does include the URLs pointing to those files, so a full restore would pull both pieces together.
Note: the JSON file does NOT include the actual PDF/image files (those are huge — they live on Backblaze B2 already). The file does include the URLs pointing to those files, so a full restore would pull both pieces together.
📨 Weekly automated backup (NEW)
Every Sunday around 3am, the server automatically generates a full backup, uploads it to Backblaze cold storage, and emails a 7-day download link to Richard and Chris.
No action needed — backups happen on schedule whether you remember or not. The email arrives Sunday morning; click the link to save to Google Drive or wherever. Use the button below to test it right now.
No action needed — backups happen on schedule whether you remember or not. The email arrives Sunday morning; click the link to save to Google Drive or wherever. Use the button below to test it right now.
🕓 Pending Volunteers
Prospective volunteers you added manually but who haven't completed sign-up yet. They get no automated emails (welcome, verification, broadcasts, holiday cards) and can't be matched until activated. They auto-activate when they log in, set a password, verify their email, or you create their first manual match — or click Activate below to do it manually.
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📧 Sent Relay Emails
Every email sent to a volunteer from the "📨 Relay Message" flow (when "📧 Also email volunteer" was ticked). Most recent first. Click a row to see the full body that was sent. Archive handled ones to clear them from this view (they're never deleted).
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📄 Letter Templates
Reusable form letters with variable substitution. From any inmate's profile click 📄 Generate Letter to fill a template with that inmate's name, address, etc.
📚 Available variables in templates:
{{first_name}}
{{last_name}}
{{inmate_number}}
{{physical_address}}
{{prison}}
{{state}}
{{communication_system}}
{{date_today}}
{{coordinator_name}}
For volunteer-audience templates:
{{first_name}}, {{last_name}}, {{email}}, {{country}}.Loading templates…
📚 Resources
Shared documents for the ministry: the Volunteer Guide, training materials, platform-specific instructions, and policies. Any admin can view and download. Only super-admin can upload, edit, or archive.
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📥 Pending Scans
Scans automatically pulled from your HP Smart → Google Drive folder. Assign each to an inmate + letter type, then it imports into the regular Letter History flow.
📖 First-time setup: See the setup guide to wire up HP Smart → Google Drive → this panel. You only need to do this once.
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☁️ Letter Archive (Backblaze B2)
Optional: archive scanned intro letter PDFs to Backblaze B2 (cloud storage) so the original files are preserved long-term. Without B2, only the OCR text is saved.
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📜 Active Pairings
End a correspondence to return the inmate to the waiting list and free up the volunteer's slot. Click 📜 to view the letter log for any correspondence. Stalled = no letter logged in 45+ days. First letter overdue = reserved 14+ days without first letter sent.
| Volunteer | Inmate | State | Via | Status | Letters | Last Activity | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Ended Correspondences
| Volunteer | Inmate | State | Ended By | Reason | Date Ended |
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📬 Letter & PDF Scanner
Two tools below — pick the right tab for what you have:
- 💾 Scan Handwritten Letter — a real letter from an inmate (cursive / pencil / paper)
- 📧 Scan & Email Volunteer — same scan, but emailed to the matched volunteer
- 📄 PDF → Images / Text — articles, recipes, news, anything PRINTED you want to share
Scan a handwritten letter and save it directly to an inmate's profile. Upload a single image, multiple images (one per page), or a PDF — or use your phone's camera to capture pages live.
Incoming letters update the inmate's intro letter (if blank) and may activate a pending inmate.
Sort:
📄
Click to upload or drag & drop
JPG, PNG (single or multiple), or PDF
📷 On your phone?
→ photograph each page, multiple pages combine into one letter
Upload a photo of a handwritten letter (single image, multiple pages, or PDF). Scanner reads the handwriting and emails it to the matched volunteer.
📄
Click to upload or drag & drop
JPG, PNG (single or multiple), or PDF
Upload a PDF (article, recipe, news story, research paper) and either extract the text for pasting into a letter, or convert the pages to JPG images for downloading.
Different from handwriting scan above. This tool is for PRINTED text in PDFs (articles, recipes). For HANDWRITTEN inmate letters, use the "💾 Scan Handwritten Letter" tab — its scanner is tuned for prison handwriting.
📄
Click to upload or drag & drop
PDF, JPG, or PNG (single or multiple pages)
📦 Bulk Import Inmates
Paste the JSON from bulk-import.json into the box below and click Import.
💡 Tip: Safe to run multiple times — no duplicates created. The new dedupe also absorbs old orphan records (same number, missing state).
📂 Relay Archive
📌 What this is
A place to archive correspondence you handle by hand — USPS letters, Securus messages, international relays. Organized as State → Inmate → Per-Volunteer Thread. Use this to look up old messages between any inmate and any one of their pen pals, and to log new ones as you process them.
📍 By State
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👤 Inmates
← Pick a state
✉️ Threads
← Pick an inmate
🗂 Volunteer Bulk Import (Legacy)
📌 What this does
Silently imports historical volunteers from Richard's spreadsheet. No emails are sent — these volunteers are already corresponding via Richard's manual workflow. They're imported as email_verified=false with a placeholder password hash. If a volunteer ever wants to use the platform, hit "Resend Verification" on their row and they'll get the standard sign-up flow. The whole batch is tagged with an import_batch_id so it can be rolled back in one click as long as none of them have been touched yet.
CSV format — one volunteer per line. Header row required. Columns:
first_name,last_name,email,country,usps_alias,signup_date,notes
Only
first_name, last_name, and email are required. Others are optional. signup_date can be any date format JS recognizes (e.g. 2/11/2025, Feb 11 2025). notes commas must be escaped — wrap the whole notes value in double quotes if it contains commas.📋 Existing Batches
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📜 Importing Dad's hand-curated CSV file? Use the dedicated panel:
Legacy CSV Import in the sidebar.
📜 Legacy CSV Import (Dad's spreadsheet)
📌 What this does
Imports Dad's hand-curated NAME, EMAIL, LOCATION, START_DATE, # PALS spreadsheet. Auto-detects the ALIAS - ONLY divider, splits ALIAS_<alias> - <real name> into usps_alias + first/last name. Email dedup is built in — re-importing the same file is safe.
📥 Import volunteers from CSV
Use the comma-delimited version (the MS-DOS one works too — same content, different line endings).
📨 Correspondence Import + Export
📌 What this does
Import: Bulk-load historical ongoing correspondence (letters between matched inmates and volunteers) from a CSV. Useful for migrating from a Word-doc system. Auto-creates assignments if a pairing doesn't exist yet. Dedups so re-running is safe.Export: Download all logged correspondence as a CSV — for backup, analysis, or sharing with coordinators.
📥 Bulk Import Ongoing Correspondence
CSV with header row. Required columns:
Direction values (any of these work):
Identification: tries volunteer email and inmate number first (exact match), falls back to fuzzy name match. Ambiguous names are reported per-row.
inmate, volunteer, direction, body. Recommended: date. Optional (improves matching): inmate_number, volunteer_email, alias.Direction values (any of these work):
sent / received, or inmate→volunteer / volunteer→inmate, or from inmate / from volunteer.Identification: tries volunteer email and inmate number first (exact match), falls back to fuzzy name match. Ambiguous names are reported per-row.
Or paste CSV text into the box below.
📤 Export Correspondence to CSV
Download a CSV of all logged correspondence. Apply filters below to narrow the export.
🔗 Inmate Match Import (Legacy Pairings)
📌 What this does
Pairs existing inmates with existing volunteers based on Richard's spreadsheet (the "PenPal Name" / "PenPal EMAIL" columns). Each pair becomes an inmate_assignments row with status=matched and the inmate is promoted from Waiting → Matched. Volunteers and inmates must already be in the database — this endpoint only creates the pairings. Tagged with an import_batch_id for one-click rollback (refused if any pair has activity, e.g. logged letters or journal entries).
Format: array of inmate match rows. Each has
inmate_first_name, inmate_last_name, state, optional aid_number/prison, plus pp_emails (array) and/or pp_names (array).
{ "batch_label": "may-2026-registry", "matches": [ { "inmate_first_name": "DONNIE", "inmate_last_name": "ABERNATHY", "state": "Alabama", "aid_number": "Z818", "pp_emails": ["holly@example.com"], "pp_names": ["Holly Watson"] } ] }
📋 Existing Batches
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🧹 Database Cleanup — Duplicate Inmates
💾 Letter History Bulk Export
Download every letter ever scanned (intro letters + ongoing correspondence) as a backup file. JSON keeps full structure for reimport; CSV opens in Excel/Google Sheets for review. Run this before any major changes — it's your safety net.
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🧹 Cleanup Imported Letter History Entries
The earlier one-time backfill copied every inmate's intro letter into the new Letter History system, but those entries duplicate the Intro Letter field shown at the top of each Edit Inmate modal. Click below to remove all "imported" entries from Letter History. The Intro Letter field stays intact — it's still the source of truth. Letter History will then only show real letters scanned via Letter Scanner going forward.
All inmates sharing the same inmate number are grouped together. The 🔒 green row in each group is the keeper — the rest are duplicates. To change the keeper: click Set as keeper on a different row. To delete one row only: click the 🗑 Delete button on that row. To delete many at once: tick the boxes and use the bulk action button at the top. Records with active correspondences cannot be deleted unless you turn on "Force delete".
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🔬 Loose-Match Scan (review manually)
Catches duplicates the strict scanner missed: name+state match with different IDs, cross-state name matches, orphans without IDs.
Click "Scan now" to find loose-match duplicate groups. The strict scanner above only catches exact (inmate#, state) matches — this one catches softer patterns.
🗄 Archive Duplicates Scan
Finds archived rows with an active twin (same name + state). Usually legacy junk that didn't get auto-merged during imports. Use the 🔗 Keep this button on the active row to absorb the archive row's history.
Click "Scan now" to find archive rows with active twins. These are pairs where the same person exists both as an active record and as an archived legacy record.
⏱️ Cron Health
Status of every scheduled task running on the server. Green = ran on schedule. Yellow = overdue. Red = failing or hasn't run in a long time. New tasks may show "never ran" until their first execution.
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