TY Letters for gifts $5 and under

Ryan Hyde

We're a fairly large operation here, and we process several hundred gifts a week. A while back, a decision was made to not send thank-you letters for gifts of $5 or less. Recently, a regular $5 donor contacted our president to complain that she wasn't getting acknowledgement, so of course we sent her a letter and marked her record. But our president has a feeling that these regular $5 donors have a higher than average likelihood of leaving us in their will (this is the classic scenario of the lady on the park bench who nobody ever knew was worth $10M). 



So my question to the community is, how do you treat gifts of $5 or less? Do you have a threshold below which you don't send a TY letter? I did some very rough math and determined that sending a TY letter for a $5 gift costs about $.60, which is 12% of the value of the gift. However, that doesn't mean it's not worth it, especially if it increases donor good will and could lead to larger gifts (or a planned gift) in the future.



Thoughts?

Marie Stark

We acknowledge all gifts.

Karen Stuhlfeier

Marie Stark:

We acknowledge all gifts.

I currently work for an organization that acknowledges all gifts, but came from one that only sent letters for $100+ gifts. I think that the kind of gift makes a difference. If someone faithfully sends you a $5 check it's a good idea to send them an acknowledgement. If your organization receives a lot of memorial gifts or has many small gifts from events like walks I don't think that it's as important and if you process thousands of gifts each year you might not have a big enough staff to realistically process and send all of the letters. 

Ryan Hyde

We do send TY letters for all HM gifts, regardless of amount. We consider that part of our job up here a service, and we do everything we can to thank the donor and to send acknowledgement to the right family member. 



I did a quick query of gifts $5 and below for 2014, and we took in about 1,900 gifts at that level. Staffing certainly is an issue. We have one person who does 90% of the data entry (or more) and 100% of donor acknowledgement letters. I've tried to find ways to streamline our acknowledgement system, and I've had some success, but it still takes a lot of time. On a separate note, we only send out TY letters once a week right now. When we can, we do two mailings a week, but that's not always possible.

Shawn Murray

We also acknowledge all gifts.



Hope this helps.



Shawn Murray

Christine Robertson

If you haven't already done so, you could switch to quarterly acknowldegment letters for your monthly pledge payments and recurring gifts that note gifts recieved YTD.  That will cut your letters back overall signicifantly, cutting costs and keeping donors happy.  Since you save money on that front, you can then better justify sending acknowledgments to all of your donors.  I've done this with a coupel of different organizations and it has worked very well.  It does require a little more planning to execute, but once you have the system set up, it's not too hard.

Ryan Hyde

We actually already go a little beyond that. Monthly recurring gifts only get one year-end tax letter, so we've cut them all out of our regular mailing procedures already. Your quarterly process is really interesting though. We've had virtually a 100% turnover in our department over the past 12 months, so a lot of these processes were put in place long ago by people who aren't here anymore. I know we've been brainstorming ways to revamp our recurring donor program, which would include more regular soft touches to check in. Quarterly gift summaries may solve some of our problem. So thanks for that idea

Gloria Sulkowski

We acknowledge all gifts

John Heizer

We've just made some changes in this area. 



We send an acknowledgement letter (that doubles as the receipt) for new pledges and when the pledge is paid in full, but not for installments (we don't currently have any recurring gifts, but that's a whole other story).



We send a letter, hand signed by the appropriate gift officer, (weekly or bi-weekly) for gifts over $20 and a postcard for gifts $1-$19.99.

Ryan Hyde

Postcards - that's interesting. Do you do those via bulk mail, or are you printing/sending stuff in-house?

Nicole S

We acknowledge all gifts.  We use a receipt for gifts 99 and under and a letter for gifts 100 and over.

John Heizer

Ryan Hyde:

Postcards - that's interesting. Do you do those via bulk mail, or are you printing/sending stuff in-house?

We've just (in the past few days) changed our procedure on this and the volume is very low.  We've been doing it by hand on cards that are pre-printed front and back, but we're shifting to cards that are only pre-printed on the front and will mail merge the back. 



 

Christine Robertson

Do you have security issues with postcards or do they not list the amounts of the gifts?

Christine Robertson

Ryan Hyde:

We actually already go a little beyond that. Monthly recurring gifts only get one year-end tax letter, so we've cut them all out of our regular mailing procedures already. Your quarterly process is really interesting though. We've had virtually a 100% turnover in our department over the past 12 months, so a lot of these processes were put in place long ago by people who aren't here anymore. I know we've been brainstorming ways to revamp our recurring donor program, which would include more regular soft touches to check in. Quarterly gift summaries may solve some of our problem. So thanks for that idea

I've done the quarterly letters at two organizations and it worked well.  It also allows an opportunity to ask for an upgrade...

Heather MacKenzie

We send acknowledgements for all gifts - letters for unique gifts of $250 and above, and a card where we write in the amount and date of the gift for less than $250.



Have you considered sending an end of year letter to those donors instead?  I agree that keeping up with the tiny gifts is a tough prospect sometimes, but our philosophy is that all donors should be thanked in some fasion.

Rita Bayer

Our receipt has a thank "blurb" you on it, and a handwritten "Thank you, Name!" is added for gifts less than $100. For recurring gifts, donors receive an end of year tax receipt with a thank you letter. Near the end of our fiscal year in May, our phonathon team places thank you calls to all recurring gift donors.

Diane Marks

We acknowledge all gifts, just as many of you have noted.

Ryan Hyde

Thanks for all of your input. We will likely be moving to a system of thanking every gift. Just about everyone here is on board for the change at this point.



And thanks for the ideas about recurring/sustaining donors. I've passed these ideas along to the pertinent decision makers here, as we're in the process of revamping our acknowledgement and outreach process for these folks as well. 



You've all been a big help

Patti Hommes, bCRE-PRO

We also acknowledge all gifts. One idea for smaller gifts - we have done this for gifts less than $100 - is a preprinted three-part form (three TYs per 8 1/2 by 11 sheet- perforated) with a place to merge the name, address, designation and $.

Sent from my iPhone

Misty Kline

We send a receipt/letter for all gift levels.

Mark McConnell

Ryan Hyde:

We're a fairly large operation here, and we process several hundred gifts a week. A while back, a decision was made to not send thank-you letters for gifts of $5 or less. Recently, a regular $5 donor contacted our president to complain that she wasn't getting acknowledgement, so of course we sent her a letter and marked her record. But our president has a feeling that these regular $5 donors have a higher than average likelihood of leaving us in their will (this is the classic scenario of the lady on the park bench who nobody ever knew was worth $10M). 


So my question to the community is, how do you treat gifts of $5 or less? Do you have a threshold below which you don't send a TY letter? I did some very rough math and determined that sending a TY letter for a $5 gift costs about $.60, which is 12% of the value of the gift. However, that doesn't mean it's not worth it, especially if it increases donor good will and could lead to larger gifts (or a planned gift) in the future.


Thoughts?

We send a pre printed postcard for any gifts under £10.00 and a letter for anything over that amount

Joanne Felci 2

Mark McConnell:

 

We send a pre printed postcard for any gifts under £10.00 and a letter for anything over that amount

 

LOVING that idea Mark!!


We don't get a high enough gift volume to care, but my previous job we shut off receipting to $5/less (or at least they had before I left, goodness knows what they do now)


I do like the preprinted postcard though

Crystal Bruce

Ryan Hyde:

We're a fairly large operation here, and we process several hundred gifts a week. A while back, a decision was made to not send thank-you letters for gifts of $5 or less. Recently, a regular $5 donor contacted our president to complain that she wasn't getting acknowledgement, so of course we sent her a letter and marked her record. But our president has a feeling that these regular $5 donors have a higher than average likelihood of leaving us in their will (this is the classic scenario of the lady on the park bench who nobody ever knew was worth $10M). 


So my question to the community is, how do you treat gifts of $5 or less? Do you have a threshold below which you don't send a TY letter? I did some very rough math and determined that sending a TY letter for a $5 gift costs about $.60, which is 12% of the value of the gift. However, that doesn't mean it's not worth it, especially if it increases donor good will and could lead to larger gifts (or a planned gift) in the future.


Thoughts?

This is a GREAT question, Ryan. I'm loving all of the responses. I'll highlight this in Community featured content too. Would you mind also posing this same question in Best Practices?

Shelley Nappier 2

Ryan Hyde:

We're a fairly large operation here, and we process several hundred gifts a week. A while back, a decision was made to not send thank-you letters for gifts of $5 or less. Recently, a regular $5 donor contacted our president to complain that she wasn't getting acknowledgement, so of course we sent her a letter and marked her record. But our president has a feeling that these regular $5 donors have a higher than average likelihood of leaving us in their will (this is the classic scenario of the lady on the park bench who nobody ever knew was worth $10M). 


So my question to the community is, how do you treat gifts of $5 or less? Do you have a threshold below which you don't send a TY letter? I did some very rough math and determined that sending a TY letter for a $5 gift costs about $.60, which is 12% of the value of the gift. However, that doesn't mean it's not worth it, especially if it increases donor good will and could lead to larger gifts (or a planned gift) in the future.


Thoughts?

We acknowledge all gifts.

Natasha Kashefipour

Ryan Hyde:

We're a fairly large operation here, and we process several hundred gifts a week. A while back, a decision was made to not send thank-you letters for gifts of $5 or less. Recently, a regular $5 donor contacted our president to complain that she wasn't getting acknowledgement, so of course we sent her a letter and marked her record. But our president has a feeling that these regular $5 donors have a higher than average likelihood of leaving us in their will (this is the classic scenario of the lady on the park bench who nobody ever knew was worth $10M). 


So my question to the community is, how do you treat gifts of $5 or less? Do you have a threshold below which you don't send a TY letter? I did some very rough math and determined that sending a TY letter for a $5 gift costs about $.60, which is 12% of the value of the gift. However, that doesn't mean it's not worth it, especially if it increases donor good will and could lead to larger gifts (or a planned gift) in the future.


Thoughts?

That is quite the dilemma. I understand not wanting to waste time and paper, but you're right that this person could potentially make a bigger gift someday or a planned gift. In fact, our former planned gift officer always liked for me to look for donors with LOTS of small gifts (like $5) because it was an indicator that they might be able to do a planned gift. Would this person enjoy a customized e-mail instead? Less effort and paper.

Tami Blair

We have a
similar situation within our organization. We have those that only
donate small amounts marked with a special constituent code, and
pull a query once a quarter and send them a summary.  So far
that has satisfied those constituents wanting to be kept
updated.

Hope that helps.

 

Tami
Blair
Administrative
Assistant - Development
HopeWest
725
South 4th Street
Montrose, CO81401
Office: 970-497-5206
Email: 
TBlair@HopeWestCO.org

www.HopeWestCO.org

 

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Terrie Meenach

We acknowledge all gifts.

Cara Perez

We acknowledge all gifts. We have asked our regular donors who tend to give small amounts every month if we can send them a thank you letter at the end of each year instead of every month. This should help cut down the cost and the amount of thank you's you send each month. 

 

La Donna Borth

Ryan Hyde:

We're a fairly large operation here, and we process several hundred gifts a week. A while back, a decision was made to not send thank-you letters for gifts of $5 or less. Recently, a regular $5 donor contacted our president to complain that she wasn't getting acknowledgement, so of course we sent her a letter and marked her record. But our president has a feeling that these regular $5 donors have a higher than average likelihood of leaving us in their will (this is the classic scenario of the lady on the park bench who nobody ever knew was worth $10M). 


So my question to the community is, how do you treat gifts of $5 or less? Do you have a threshold below which you don't send a TY letter? I did some very rough math and determined that sending a TY letter for a $5 gift costs about $.60, which is 12% of the value of the gift. However, that doesn't mean it's not worth it, especially if it increases donor good will and could lead to larger gifts (or a planned gift) in the future.


Thoughts?

We send a thank you letter for all gifts, unless the donor has indicated that they do not wish to receive an acknowledgement. We have a monthly donor who sends in $2. I wouldn't dream of not sending a thank you letter for that gift - I'm certain it's from the heart. 

Cindy Shanks

We do not send thank you receipt for $5 or less. However, we do send a year-end statement to anyone who gives monthly regardless of the total amount. This method works well for us.