Honor/Memorial Acknowledgee Letters -- Timeline?

Autumn Hubbard

What is the best practice on when to send out the tribute letter to the acknowledgees about who has donated to the tribute? How long after establishing the tribute do you wait?

Jenny Norton

When it is a new deceased person, we usually wait a week to two to gather a bunch and send a special letter to the family.  After that, we just send them as they come in. 



Jenny

Ryan Hyde

We create individual tribute documents for each gift in honor/memory of someone. The tribute document isn't a standard letter in appearance, but it's printed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper and is laid out in Word, so RE can handle it like a standard letter. We send the tributes documents out on the same schedule as our TY letters get sent out, which is once a week right now, though I'd like to move to a twice weekly system. 



When we have multiple gifts coming in for a single honor/memorial recipient in a given week, we stuff up to 4 tributes into one envelope to cut back on costs. We haven't ever received any complaints about that practice. 



In general though, I think treating the process as a per-gift instead of per-tribute is the right way to go. And if any family member wants a full list, we can produce them an up to date tribute report upon request. 

Heather MacKenzie

99.9% of the time, we send an acknowledgement as each gift comes in.  Very occasionally, we will get a large amount of gifts for one tribute, and then will send a list to one designated family member about every 2 weeks.



We are thinking about changing this process, potentially, so I am going to keep following this to see what others are doing as well.  Thanks for asking this one!

Katherine Popowich

We do one deposit per week for anything Honour/Memorials there is typically nothing else in that batch; makes it easier to track acknowledgement letters and we dont have to wait to commit the batch. Then within that week we will prepare the letters and sent out either the same week or next week worst case senerio. This way we can have a decent grouping of donations to send out to the next of kin.The letter its self has the potential of 28 potential donations that could be in one letter at a time to help save admin costs. 

Debra Holcomb

Yosemite Conservancy sends tribute notifications once a week (typically on Fridays).  If multiple gifts were received during the week, they are all included in the single notice.  Having been on the receiving side of memorial notifications from other organizations, it's nice to know about memorial gifts sooner rather than later so if you see the donor you can thank them for remembering your loved one in person.  

Angie Stumpo

We send them as gifts come in, after each batch is complete. We have tried waiting a week or two, but things always get missed or forgotten, so this has been the best system for us.

Susan Leslie

We do daily batches as well and if we know we are going to get multiple gifts for a special tribute then we may hold the family letter until that friday to put in the mail.  We combine all donors to the tribute to one letter for the day or week so only one letter goes out to the family at a time.  Otherwise we mail the family letter the same time we mail the gift letter to the donor.

Linda Allen

We send once or twice a week depending on the # received. I also formatted the letter with a table so each letter can have up to 8 names/addresses on it, saves the need to send multiple letters.

Tracy Wittkopp

Linda Allen:

We send once or twice a week depending on the # received. I also formatted the letter with a table so each letter can have up to 8 names/addresses on it, saves the need to send multiple letters.

Linda, your table idea sounds like it could solve the problems we are facing at our organization. How did you set that up? Do you have a Word template you could share?