Getting Started
Welcome to Ayuna — an all-in-one affiliate management platform built to help Habitat for Humanity affiliates run their volunteer programs, ReStores, donor relationships, and homeowner pipelines from a single system.
This guide will walk you through your first login and help you get oriented in the application.
What is Ayuna?
Ayuna brings together the day-to-day operations of an affiliate into one secure, multi-tenant platform:
- Volunteers — track hours, manage events, and coordinate registrations
- Fundraising — manage profiles, donations, campaigns, events, and tax receipts
- Thrift Stores — run point-of-sale, manage inventory, and report on sales
- Homeowners — process applications and track construction projects
- Communications — send template-driven email and SMS to your community
- Reporting — build dashboards and export data across every module
Before You Begin
To use Ayuna, you'll need:
- A user account created by an administrator at your affiliate
- Your affiliate identifier (provided by your administrator)
- A modern web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge)
- An internet connection
If you don't have an account yet, contact your affiliate administrator to have one provisioned or visit https://app.ayunacore.com to register.
Verifying Your Email
When you register a new account yourself, Ayuna sends a verification email to the address you signed up with. Open that email and click Verify Email to confirm your address. You must verify before you can sign in.
Didn't get the email?
- Check your spam or junk folder.
- Use the Resend verification email button on the confirmation screen (or on the sign-in screen if you try to log in before verifying) to send a fresh link.
- Verification links expire after a couple of days — if yours has expired, request a new one and use the most recent email.
- Still nothing? Use Forgot password on the sign-in screen, or ask a staff member to send you an invite. Either way you'll get a Reset Your Password email. Setting your password from that link also verifies your email, so you can sign in right away.
:::note For staff Every staff role can send login invites, from User Management → Invite User, the Send registration invite option when adding a constituent, or Send Invite on selected contacts. Staff can invite people as volunteers, donors, homeowners and other constituents. Inviting someone as a staff member or an administrator needs an administrator, and the staff and admin roles don't appear in the list for anyone else. If your role can't send invites, you'll see a note in place of the invite option.
If you invite someone who already has an account, Ayuna emails them a link to set their password and assigns any roles they're missing. The confirmation message tells you which of these happened. If an email can't be sent, you'll see a red Email Not Sent message instead of a success message. You'll get an error if the person's login access is turned off; turn it back on before you invite them. :::
If your account was created by an administrator (staff invite) or through your affiliate's onboarding, your email is already verified and you can sign in right away.
Signing In
- Navigate to your Ayuna URL (e.g.,
https://your-affiliate.ayuna.app). - Enter your email address and password.
- Select your affiliate from the list.
- Click Sign In.
If your account has multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled, you'll be prompted to enter a one-time code from your authenticator app.
Forgot your password? Use the Forgot password? link on the login screen to receive a reset email.
Accepting the Terms of Service
If you registered yourself, you agreed to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy as part of signing up, and there is nothing more to do.
If your account was created for you — by an administrator using Create User, or through single sign-on — you never saw those documents, so Ayuna asks you to review them the first time you sign in. A notice appears at the bottom of the screen with links to read each document and an I acknowledge button. Choose Later to dismiss it for now; it returns at your next sign-in until you acknowledge.
You'll see the same notice again whenever we publish a new version of either document. In that case the notice says the documents have been updated, so you can tell a routine revision apart from a first-time request.
Occasionally a Terms of Service revision contains material changes to your agreement with us. Those are presented as a dialog you must answer before continuing, rather than a dismissible notice.
The Dashboard
After signing in, you'll land on your Dashboard — a customizable home view that surfaces the metrics and shortcuts most relevant to your role.
From here you can:
- Review key metrics for your area (volunteer hours, recent donations, store sales, etc.)
- Customize tiles via the dashboard builder (drag, drop, resize)
- Switch between dashboards if multiple are available to you
Navigating the Application
The left-hand navigation menu is tailored to your role and permissions. You'll only see modules and actions that you're authorized to use.
Common modules include:
| Module | What you'll do here |
|---|---|
| Volunteers | Log hours, register for events, manage volunteer profiles |
| Fundraising | View donor profiles, record donations, manage campaigns and events |
| Projects | Track construction projects, phases, and budgets |
| Stores | Process sales, manage coupons |
| Communications | Send messages, view templates, review delivery status |
| Reports | Generate reports and export data |
Jumping back to records you just opened
Ayuna remembers the records you open and lists them under Recents — the clock button on the left of the top navigation bar, just after your organization's name. It covers constituent profiles, volunteer opportunities, fundraising campaigns, fundraising events, construction projects, and homeowner applications. Click the icon to see the last ten you looked at (newest first), each labeled with what kind of record it is, and pick one to go straight back to it without searching again.
The list is private to your own login on that browser, and Clear empties it whenever you want a clean slate. The button only appears once you've opened at least one record.
Parts of a profile your role can't see
Anyone who can look people up can open a constituent's profile, but each part of it follows the same access as its own screen. A homeowner manager, for example, sees the applicant's contact details and applications but not their donations unless their role also covers donations.
Ayuna marks what's withheld instead of showing it as empty:
- A tab with nothing on it you can see, such as Volunteering or Fundraising, is greyed out. Hover over it to see why.
- On a tab you can open, a Hidden for your role note at the top lists the sections you can't see. On Overview, totals you can't see show a dash and read No access rather than $0 or 0 hours.
If you need to see one of those sections, ask an administrator to add it to your role.
Seeing everything waiting on you
The checklist icon in the top bar is where everything that needs your attention collects: tasks a colleague has handed you (or you've kept for yourself), grant tasks that are yours, and approvals waiting on a decision you can make. The badge is them all added together; hover it to see the split. The icon appears for anyone who can work tasks, and for approvers and grant teams with something pending.
Click it to open the Action Items panel on the right side of the screen.
Your tasks come first, grouped into Overdue, Due today, Upcoming and No due date. Each shows who gave it to you, when it's due, and a link to the page where the work is (an application's documents section, an opportunity's roster). Tick the box to mark it done; the menu on the right lets you mark it Won't do, or, for tasks you created, edit or delete it. Below the list, Assigned by you shows what you've handed to others and is still open, and Completed keeps finished tasks — ones you did and ones you handed out — until you dismiss them, one at a time or with Dismiss all. Dismissing clears your own list only: the other person keeps the task on theirs until they dismiss it too. Untick a completed task to reopen it if it was ticked by mistake.
New task opens a short form. Choose who does it first: you, or any staff member at your affiliate, found by name or email. Then choose where the work is under Link to: pick an area (Volunteering, Fundraising, Grants, Homeowners, Projects, Point of sale and ReStore, Communications, Reports and dashboards, Accounting, Constituents or Administration), what needs doing there ("Update opportunity", "Verify application documents", "Create campaign"), and, when it's about one record, which one, found by search. The list only offers pages the person you chose can open, so a task can't send a colleague somewhere they can't go. The title fills itself in from your choices until you type your own. Custom link takes any page in Ayuna instead, pasted from the address bar. Add a priority, a due date, an optional reminder emailed at the time you pick, and details. Whoever you assign it to is emailed straight away, with the link.
Grant tasks comes next for anyone who can open Grants: the open tasks from a grant's Tasks tab that are assigned to you, or that you created with nobody assigned. Each shows its grant and due date, with a link to the grant; tick the box to mark it done. Assigned by you lists the grant tasks you handed to someone else. See Keep a Task List on a Grant.
Approvals follows, listing each area with items waiting and how many. Most link straight to the page where you approve them. Areas where the work belongs to a particular opportunity or application (opportunity sign-ups, homeowner applications, application documents and education requirements) open a short list instead, showing the first few opportunities or applicants with how many items each has waiting. Click one to go straight to it; an application opens at its Documents or Education Requirements section. The person icon beside each entry hands that item to a colleague as a task, with the title and link already filled in. If more are waiting than the list shows, the link at the bottom of the list opens the full page.
You can also open the full Action Items page from your name in the top-right corner (Action Items, which shows the same count next to it), or from See all approvals at the bottom of the panel.
The page is grouped by area and shows only what your role can approve:
| Area | What can be waiting |
|---|---|
| Volunteers | Sign-ups for opportunities and shifts that need approval, waivers to review, requirement submissions and documents to verify, logged hours to approve |
| Homeowners | Applications submitted or under review, documents applicants uploaded that need verifying, education requirements applicants completed that need approving, sweat equity hours to approve |
| ReStore | Donation pickup requests waiting for review, drop-offs donors registered ahead that need confirming |
Each card shows how many items are pending and a button that opens the page where you approve them. For opportunity sign-ups, homeowner applications, application documents and education requirements, the card also lists the first few opportunities or applications with items waiting. Click one to open it directly, or use the person icon beside it to assign it to a colleague as a task. A card with nothing waiting shows All clear. The page and the menu entry appear only if your role can approve at least one of these.
Customizing Your Experience
Ayuna includes several personalization options under your profile menu (top-right corner):
- Theme palette — choose from multiple color schemes
- Profile settings — update your name, contact info, and preferences
- Security — change your password and manage MFA
- Support - view status of feedback support requests submitted through the help button in the bottom right hand corner of every page once you are signed in.
Seeing the details of a support request
The Support tab lists every request you've submitted. Select any row to open it, and you'll see the full message you sent — not just the shortened preview from the list — along with the page you submitted it from and how far along it is.
Following a request's progress
Each request moves through four steps, shown as a progress tracker in the detail view with the date it reached each one:
| Step | What it means |
|---|---|
| Submitted | Your request reached the Ayuna team. |
| In Progress | Someone is working on it. |
| Testing | The change is on the test environment and is being checked. |
| Completed | The change shipped to production as part of a release. |
The badge in the list shows the same thing at a glance, so you can tell which requests are still being worked on and which ones have shipped without opening each one.
Knowing when your support request is fixed
You don't have to keep checking the Support tab. When a request you submitted is fixed — either because the change has shipped or because the Ayuna team resolved it — a small life-ring icon appears in the header bar at the top of the page, with a count of how many of your requests have been resolved.
Click the icon and Ayuna takes you straight to Settings → Support, where the request shows how far it has progressed and the date the fix landed. The icon then disappears and stays gone — including after you log out and back in, and on your other devices. It comes back only when another of your requests is fixed.
Only you see this icon, and only for requests you submitted yourself.
Setting Your Timezone
Ayuna displays dates and times throughout the app — event schedules, donation timestamps, report data, and more — in a timezone. There are two layers you can control.
Organization default (administrators)
Your affiliate has a single default timezone that everyone at your organization sees unless they choose their own. To change it:
- Open Settings from your profile menu (top-right corner).
- Go to the Organization tab.
- Under Timezone Preferences, choose your timezone in the Organization Default selector.
The change saves immediately and applies to every user at your affiliate who has not set a personal preference. Only administrators can change the organization default.
Personal preference (any user)
Prefer to see times in your own timezone? Set a personal override that applies only to your account:
- Open Settings from your profile menu.
- Find the Timezone Preferences section.
- Choose a timezone under Personal Timezone Preference, or leave it blank to follow the organization default.
Leave your personal preference blank to always follow the organization default. That way, if your affiliate ever changes its default timezone, your view updates automatically.
Available timezones are Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Arizona (no daylight saving), Alaska, Hawaii, and UTC.
Getting Help
- Documentation — browse the rest of these docs for module-specific guides
- Support — contact your affiliate administrator, who can escalate to Ayuna support if needed
Next Steps
Now that you're signed in, explore the module guides in the sidebar to learn how to perform common tasks in your area.