Recurring Gift *friendly* reminder

Jacob Williamson

Apologies if this has come up before, I've searched around and not seen this specific thread. We have a large number of older donors and they get...brittle...about pledge reminders, and lately our national organization has made a strong shift to recurring gifts. The "pledge invoice" is my only tool for sending out reminders for declined credit cards, but it's hard to edit meaningfully and our supporters don't like getting an invoiced for a recurring gift, and they send me passive-aggressive notes on post-its about it. Does anybody have a method for friendly reminders that they use? I'd love something I can print from the "mail/reminders" documents but the pledge invoice fields seem to be completely uncustomizable. I might be able to do some sort of merge with the "gift recognition letter" and a three-up Avery template or something, but I'd welcome a cleaner solution.Best,Jacob Williamson, KLRU TV

JoAnn Strommen

Jacob Williamson:
Apologies if this has come up before, I've searched around and not seen this specific thread. We have a large number of older donors and they get...brittle...about pledge reminders, and lately our national organization has made a strong shift to recurring gifts. The "pledge invoice" is my only tool for sending out reminders for declined credit cards, but it's hard to edit meaningfully and our supporters don't like getting an invoiced for a recurring gift, and they send me passive-aggressive notes on post-its about it. Does anybody have a method for friendly reminders that they use? I'd love something I can print from the "mail/reminders" documents but the pledge invoice fields seem to be completely uncustomizable. I might be able to do some sort of merge with the "gift recognition letter" and a three-up Avery template or something, but I'd welcome a cleaner solution.Best,Jacob Williamson, KLRU TV

What fields/problems are you having customizing a document using "reminders"? Have you looked at the fields available when you choose Reminder type: Create custom data file? I haven't used the 'per installment' option. Don't remember what different options that might give. I'm not following why you could not create a soft billing stating credit card declined using this. Could look like an invoice or just pull fields into a letter format. Are you dealing with large #s on a regular basis? Are the declines due to expired cards?