Advocate Applications

Allow prospective advocates to apply to join your community through a public application form. You can customize the form with your own questions, review submissions, and approve or reject applicants directly from your admin portal.

Enabling Applications

The application feature is disabled by default. To turn it on:

1. Go to Settings in the navigation
2. Click Advocate Applications
3. Toggle Advocate Applications Enabled to on

Once enabled, your community will have a public application form at /join that prospective advocates can fill out. On the same settings page, you can toggle Email Notifications to receive an email each time a new application is submitted.

Customizing the Application Form

Form Messaging

You can personalize the text applicants see on the form and after they submit:

1. Go to Settings > Advocate Applications
2. Edit the Join Title and Join Subtitle displayed at the top of the form
3. Add optional helper text for the name, contact, address, media, and terms sections to guide applicants. The contact section includes default text reassuring applicants that their email and phone number will never be displayed publicly.
4. Configure the Thank You page that appears after submission - choose the default message or redirect applicants to a custom URL

Every applicant must agree to your terms before submitting. You can customize the terms helper text to link to your specific terms of service or community guidelines.

Custom Questions

Pro plan and above. Custom application questions are available on Pro and Enterprise plans.

Add your own questions to gather information beyond the standard fields (name, email, phone, address).

1. Go to Settings > Advocate Applications
2. Click Manage Questions
3. Click Add Question
4. Enter a prompt, optional placeholder text, and optional helper text
5. Choose a response type:
   • Short Text - a single-line text field
   • Long Text - a multi-line text area
   • Single Select - a dropdown with predefined options (enter each option when creating the question)
   • Multiple Select - a multi-select dropdown where applicants can pick one or more options from a predefined list
6. Mark the question as Required if applicants must answer it
7. For Multiple Select questions, optionally set a Minimum and Maximum number of selections
8. Click Save

You can reorder questions using the Move Up and Move Down controls, and edit or remove questions at any time. Responses to deleted questions are preserved on existing applications.

Reviewing Applications

All submitted applications appear under Advocate Applications in the main navigation.

Searching and Filtering

• Use the search bar to find applications by applicant name
• Filter the list by status: Pending, Approved, Rejected, or All

Viewing Application Details

1. Click on an application to open its detail page
2. Review the applicant’s name, email, phone number, address, avatar, uploaded media, and responses to your custom questions

Duplicate Advocate Detection

When you view a pending application, Stoked automatically checks whether an advocate with the same email address or phone number already exists in your community. If a match is found, a warning banner appears on the application detail page and in the inbox entry:

• Yellow warning — the matching advocate is in a pending (not yet active) state. Approving will update their existing profile with the application data.
• Red warning — the matching advocate is already active. Approving will overwrite their current profile information.

The warning includes a side-by-side comparison showing the current advocate’s name, email, phone, and location alongside the incoming application data, with differences highlighted. A link to the existing advocate’s profile lets you review their full record before deciding.

Approving and Rejecting Applications

From the application detail page:

• Click Approve to create an advocate record using the application information (name, contact details, address, avatar, media, and testimonial if enabled). If a matching advocate already exists (see above), their record is updated instead of creating a duplicate.
• Click Reject to decline the application. Rejected applications remain in the system and can be viewed by filtering for Rejected status.
• You can reset a rejected or approved application back to Pending if you need to reconsider it.

Inbox Integration

New applications automatically create an entry in your Inbox. You can approve or reject applications directly from the inbox without navigating to the applications list. When an application is approved or rejected, its inbox entry is archived automatically.