Gift Acknowledgement - Selecting Specific Contact

karen dibling

When entering gifts from an organization in batch, is there a way to select to whom the thank you should be addressed?  What happens now is that a letter is generated to everyone listed as a contact in the organization record.  (We are running thank you letters through quick letters.)  We end up deleting the letters we don't want before printing.  Not only is this cumbersome, but many times the person who actually runs the letters is not sure which contact should actually receive the thank you.  



There has to be a better way!

John Heizer

Unfortunately this isn't currently possible anywhere in RE.  You can vote to have this added to a future version here:  http://rediscovery.uservoice.com/forums/137015-raiser-s-edge-discovery-topics/suggestions/2953244-add-contact-on-gift-records



 

Gina Gerhard

If you're running your letters through Mail, in the Donor Acknowledgement Letter format there's an option on the 7 Org Address tab to select the contact type.  

• So on the org record, f you've entered a specific contact type or contact attribute to mark who should receive the acknowledgement, you should be able to direct the letter to this specific contact? 

Or am I missing something...??

JoAnn Strommen

It can't be specified in batch but you do have some options in Quick letters depending on how you've identified your contacts.  If you are using quick letter for Gala Event and you have a contact for the org noted as Gala Event contact type you can select to use that contact type or set a prioritized list of contacts to use as part of the letter set up.  Org Addressee tab - Contacts - you can choose specific contact types and whether to send to all those types in order.

karen dibling

Gina, no you are not missing anything....   Our DB Admin has a different "use" for contact types that we might want to re-address.  Thanks for the input!

karen dibling

John Heizer:

Unfortunately this isn't currently possible anywhere in RE.  You can vote to have this added to a future version here:  http://rediscovery.uservoice.com/forums/137015-raiser-s-edge-discovery-topics/suggestions/2953244-add-contact-on-gift-records



 

Thank you!!!  This is exactly what I was looking for.  (I had just hoped that it was already a reality, and I had just missed it... 

Gina Gerhard

Karen - We ended up separating out how we code contact types - so for general mailing purposes we use contact types but for acknowledgement letters we created a contact attribute and put the coding there. So it separates the two coding systems.

Jen Claudy

Gina Gerhard:

Karen - We ended up separating out how we code contact types - so for general mailing purposes we use contact types but for acknowledgement letters we created a contact attribute and put the coding there. So it separates the two coding systems.

This is what we do.  There is a relationship attribute for who gets the acknowledgement letter.  What I really want to see is the option for sending ack letters to multiple contacts.  There are cases where the letter needs to go to Mr. John Doe, cc Ms. Jane Smith, Mr. Jack Albert...and as it is now, we have to know that when generating the letters, and manually make that happen.

Christine Cooke 2

Since you mentioned that your DBAdmin has a "different use" for the contact type field.  I would revisit that.  One of the reasons that field is there is just specifically for what you are trying to do -- address the mail to a specific person at that Org.  If your DBA does not want to rethink, then I would suggest just adding the Ack. Contact Type to the list.  That should not hurt whatever the DBA is utilizing the field for.



As mentioned, you should be using Acknowledement Letters in Mail instead of Quick Letters.  There is the choice on the Org Tab to say which Contact Type should receive the letter, and that is the only one(s) that will print.

karen dibling

Jennifer Claudy:

Gina Gerhard:

Karen - We ended up separating out how we code contact types - so for general mailing purposes we use contact types but for acknowledgement letters we created a contact attribute and put the coding there. So it separates the two coding systems.

This is what we do.  There is a relationship attribute for who gets the acknowledgement letter.  What I really want to see is the option for sending ack letters to multiple contacts.  There are cases where the letter needs to go to Mr. John Doe, cc Ms. Jane Smith, Mr. Jack Albert...and as it is now, we have to know that when generating the letters, and manually make that happen.

 

An option to send ack letters to multiple contacts would greatly reduce the manual efforts!

JoAnn Strommen

I'm not sure why they are using Quick letters vs. acknowledgement but just FYI the same contact options are available for quick letters.

Susan Leslie

Our gift letters combine both the tax receipt information and a thank you letter from our VP that we use for each charitable gift.  We code our contacts to allow us to choose who to send things to.  We use Primary for those who is our top contact and they get the majority of everything we send.  But we also have a Fdtn Gift Letter that is used for when someone other than our primary contact should receive the gift letter.  We use Mail / Receipts to create our letters to our donors. It has a place to choose which contacts and even order them for letters.  We use Fdtn Gift Letters then Primary contacts for the system to choose correctly.  It works great for us as we usually only have a few contacts per business.