New Acknowledge Type needed

Cindy Avery

We are moving into the 21st Century and have begun to direct more gifts (through social media and direct mail) to our new and improved website. We are now using Luminate to link these gifts to Raiser's Edge records and are being more efficient with time and resources by sending an email response to the donor immediately (it is basically a shorter version of the paper TY letter we would send.) 


Right now, the only choices I have regarding Acknowledgments are 1. Acknowledged 2. Not Acknowledged 3. Do Not Acknowledge. This doesn't seem to be a table we can customize.


Can we add 4. Online Acknowledge? I need to be able to differentiate between a TY they received for an online gift and a TY I generate for an offline gift. This is crucial on several levels of gift management. 

Does anyone else run into this problem and how do you handle it? I would certainly love input / suggestions / comments. 


Based on responses, I will try to figure out how to put it in the Idea Bank for voting.


Thanks!

Ryan Hyde

For us, since online gifts are automatically acknowledged via email, we don't bother dealing with acknowledged vs not acknowledged for online gifts. We track online gifts via a gift subtype (currently Sphere, but we're migrating to Luminate as well). So gifts that we bring in over the connector get the Sphere subtype, letter code = No Letter, and we don't ever change the acknowledgement.


However, if that system doesn't work with how you set up your reporting, then here's what I would suggest.


1.) Create a new letter code called "Luminate TY" (no need to actually populate this with a real letter in either Config or the Mail module)

2.) Add this letter type to all gifts coming over via the Luminate connector

3.) Mark them all acknowledged


So they are marked acknowledged just like anything else is (because acknowledgement really is a binary system), and you're tracking the method of acknowledgement in the acutal letter code, which is the same way you currently track the method of acknowledgement for all other gifts (I'm sure you have codes for general TY, Honor/Memorial, grant, watever). 

Katie Coppedge

I have actually asked that same question.  The support member said that those are hard coded and there is not a way at this time to add/delete/edit them.  


 

Nicole S

I call them acknowledged and use "online" or something like that in the letter code. Don't over think it, at least that's how I approached it.