A Better Way to Do Tribute Gifts in Online Express?

Michael Allan

Just curious if anyone has a better way of processing transactions in Online Express that are tributes (when an official tribute hasn't been set up in RE). We have been linking it to our own organization's profile and then removing it once it's in the batch. Really, most of these are one-offs and all we want to is to capture information for the donor's acknowledgement letter and the tribute recipient's card or email (in honor of or in memory of, personalized message, mailing or email address), so it seems unnecessarily tedious to have to do this extra step. Thank you!

Austen Brown

We link these types of tributes to our “Anonymous” record. We utilize the tribute connection in pulling reports/lists so it is helpful for our processes to see that a tribute exists even though we did not create a full record for it.

Michael Allan

Thanks Austen. We use the same appeal code for all tribute gifts to accomplish the same thing (pulling a report of all tribute gifts in the fiscal year, for example). Thank you for responding!

Elizabeth Olson

Michael,

After running into the same issue, we turned off the Tribute info in our online donation form. The constituent can enter the information in the comments and then we create the tribute in the batch through database mode.

Michael Allan

Thanks Elizabeth. Good to know I'm not the only one who was frustrated with that feature. The solution you implemented is also the plan I've presented as an alternative, but I have encountered some pushback from colleagues who do not think donors will remember to include all the info we want to capture (tribute name, address or email address and message)

Elizabeth Olson

It has been successful both for tributes as well as linking constituents and companies. Constituents are now more likely to leave a gift comment like "In Honor of" or "In Memory of".

Michael Allan

Got it. Thanks again Elizabeth. This info will be very helpful when recommending this fix again.

Heather MacKenzie

Depending on donors using the comments box and then having what feels like extra steps (and then you have to “remember” to do them) later on is not something I support. I vote for using the Anonymous (or some other record) to do them right from within the gift processing area and keeping the fields on the form. This feels to me the better way to make sure that everything is captured and done.

However, I support 100% doing what's best for your organization, so just make sure you figure out what that is. If you do decide to remove the tribute area from your donation forms, I would suggest having a trial period to see if you like it or not, and then making a final decision down the road in say 3 months, after 10 gifts with tributes, or whatever you decide.

Michael Allan

Hi Heather, thanks for the suggestions. I think either method would be one that needs to be evaluated after some time, whether we implement the use of the comment section (which requires remembering and donors to input info) or continuing as is with the tribute section (which is incredibly frustrating since it adds relationships and addresses to the constituent record for Anonymous)

Kathleen Eastman

We have them set up as 2 separate gift attributes In honor of and In memory of. They appear just above the comments section and you can enter an instructional sentence just above it. It is very easy to merge that into a receipt or acknowledgement letter and it also appears in the email receipt and notification with the transaction details. See below:

Michael Allan

Thanks Kathleen. I really like that. I think that looks most like something we would want to pursue.

Faith Murray

We just use a “Tribute Dummy Record” to which we link all one-time tributes that have no existing donor record. We get a lot of these, since we are a religious org and people want us to pray for them. Then the memorial person's name goes in a gift attribute for merging in the thank-you letters.

Michael Allan

Thanks Faith. Yes, the vast majority of our tribute gifts are one time donations of relatively small amounts. I like the idea of a Tribute Gift record.

Kathleen Eastman

Your most welcome Michael. Glad I could help!