Soliciting Tribute Acknowledgees

Allison Strickland · July 2016

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

Karla VanEgmond · July 2016

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

I am at a hospice also. We actually create full RE constituent records for our acknowledgees and attach them to the tribute. Then we are able to use queries to isolate and/or include these folks in mailings of different sorts when needed. This also allows us to query the acknowledgees for gift giving history, etc.

Linda Allen · July 2016

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

We make the acknowledgee a constituent and I add an attribute called hospice family acknowlegee with date and we mail to them for 3 years if we haven't converted to a donor at that point they are removed from solicitations and mailings. We have a newsletter as well as solicitations that we send.

Faith Murray · July 2016

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

Karla and Allison -- could you share yoru communication strategy with these people? We have never solicited acknowledgees, because our org considered it "money-grubby" to solicit someone who has just recently lost a family member, and we figured that they didn't really have much of a connection to us in the long haul so chances of a donor conversion were slim. However, every so often we have tossed an idea around, of creating a new Memorial program, inviting acknowledgees and Memorial givers to commemorate the anniversary of their loved one with an annual gift. Do you have any thought s on this, or any special communications strategies that you use? And how successful have you found your acknowledgee donor conversion to be?

Jill Freidmutter · July 2016

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

We are also a hospice organization. We make acknowledgees and other family members full constituents. We invite them to memorial events (we have three a year -- one just for families of patients and two for the entire community). We send ack/family members our newsletter, which has a remittance envelope so it is a soft solicitation. Once 13 months have passed since their loved one's death, we send them our annual solicitation letter. If we don't have any connection with the constituent within a certain period of time, we make the record inactive. The period of time is different for local family members and non-local family members. Our database was 12 years old when I started here. I don't use the non-constituent records as a rule, except for spouses, because I found crazy stuff due to non-constituent acknowledgees. Two simple examples: 1. An acknowledgee in a non-constituent record later gave a donation. A new record was created for her, and she was never tagged as related to the deceased. 2. An acknowledgee in a non-constituent record later became strongly integrated into our organization. It turns out that his mother, who he was acknowledgee for, was a former board member. His personal record was never linked to his mother's record (until I discovered the buried ack sub-record in the tribute). I would love to hear how other hospices reach out to acknowledgees and family members of deceased? How and when do you contact them?

Karla VanEgmond · July 2016

Faith Murray:

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

Karla and Allison -- could you share yoru communication strategy with these people? We have never solicited acknowledgees, because our org considered it "money-grubby" to solicit someone who has just recently lost a family member, and we figured that they didn't really have much of a connection to us in the long haul so chances of a donor conversion were slim. However, every so often we have tossed an idea around, of creating a new Memorial program, inviting acknowledgees and Memorial givers to commemorate the anniversary of their loved one with an annual gift. Do you have any thought s on this, or any special communications strategies that you use? And how successful have you found your acknowledgee donor conversion to be?

Faith,

We do very much the same as Jill's response. We send acknowledgees/patient families our quarterly newsletter which includes a soft ask. Currently, our only actual solicitation to these folks is for a combination fundraising/memorial-tribute program that we have around the holiday season. However, we are looking at a way to target the patient families with an ask - discussing the concerns you mention (money-grubbing, etc). We are still working on this. If anyone else has tried implementing something like this, I'd love to have some input.

James Andrews · July 2016

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

Everyone's answers seem to be "we make these people constituents", which may help you in setting policy in the future, but doesn't help you get your solicitation list together now.

If I were you I'd make a query of the memorial gifts you're looking for, and use that as a basis for running Honor Memorial Acknowledgees out of RE:Mail. Choose "send one letter per tribute" on tab 2 and export.

The only problem with doing this is you'd have to do a global change first and temporarily mark all your hon/mems as unacknowledged (note in global change this is different from marking the gift unacknowledged). REMail offers to mark them acknowledged when you're finished the process, so they'll be marked acknowledged again when you're through.

I haven't tested this extensively, but it SHOULD give you a mostly workable name and address list, even if there are some duplicates and/or other extraneous fields to clean up.

N.B.:The usual warnings apply about being careful with global changes and all that.

Allison Strickland · July 2016

Thank you James! Your response is very practical. I totally agree with the consensus that going forward we should make all acknowledgees constituents. Your solution is something easy I can implement before our end of year mailing. I appreciate your help!

Allison Strickland · July 2016

Faith Murray:

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

Karla and Allison -- could you share yoru communication strategy with these people? We have never solicited acknowledgees, because our org considered it "money-grubby" to solicit someone who has just recently lost a family member, and we figured that they didn't really have much of a connection to us in the long haul so chances of a donor conversion were slim. However, every so often we have tossed an idea around, of creating a new Memorial program, inviting acknowledgees and Memorial givers to commemorate the anniversary of their loved one with an annual gift. Do you have any thought s on this, or any special communications strategies that you use? And how successful have you found your acknowledgee donor conversion to be?

Faith,

Right now, we aren't doing anything to specifically solicit the family. However, we getting ready to implement a grateful family program. The family will receive a solicitation somewhere around 2-4 months after their loved one passes (we haven't settled on the exact time yet). We also plan to send a second mailing around Mother's Day/Father's Day. We see a spike in memorial giving around Mother's Day and thought this might be a natural second ask. The solicitation hasn't been written yet but will center around honoring the loved one and thanking a special caregiver. So many of our donors give (and continue to give) because they've had a hospice experience. I think a lot of these acknowledgees would give if asked. But we just haven't been asking.

Christine Robertson · July 2016

James Andrews:

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

Everyone's answers seem to be "we make these people constituents", which may help you in setting policy in the future, but doesn't help you get your solicitation list together now.

If I were you I'd make a query of the memorial gifts you're looking for, and use that as a basis for running Honor Memorial Acknowledgees out of RE:Mail. Choose "send one letter per tribute" on tab 2 and export.

The only problem with doing this is you'd have to do a global change first and temporarily mark all your hon/mems as unacknowledged (note in global change this is different from marking the gift unacknowledged). REMail offers to mark them acknowledged when you're finished the process, so they'll be marked acknowledged again when you're through.

I haven't tested this extensively, but it SHOULD give you a mostly workable name and address list, even if there are some duplicates and/or other extraneous fields to clean up.

N.B.:The usual warnings apply about being careful with global changes and all that.

You should be able to create a gift query and pull the acknowledgee information out that way without having to change any of your gift acknowledgments. You could also use a gift query along those lines to create an import file should you want to create constituent records for the past donors. If you did that, you could retroactively add an attribute like the ones the ladies mentioned in other comments.

Jill Freidmutter · July 2016

James Andrews:

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

Everyone's answers seem to be "we make these people constituents", which may help you in setting policy in the future, but doesn't help you get your solicitation list together now.

If I were you I'd make a query of the memorial gifts you're looking for, and use that as a basis for running Honor Memorial Acknowledgees out of RE:Mail. Choose "send one letter per tribute" on tab 2 and export.

The only problem with doing this is you'd have to do a global change first and temporarily mark all your hon/mems as unacknowledged (note in global change this is different from marking the gift unacknowledged). REMail offers to mark them acknowledged when you're finished the process, so they'll be marked acknowledged again when you're through.

I haven't tested this extensively, but it SHOULD give you a mostly workable name and address list, even if there are some duplicates and/or other extraneous fields to clean up.

N.B.:The usual warnings apply about being careful with global changes and all that.

Thank you, James, for clarifying the question!

Allison, you can gather acknowledgees in a query. If the constituent is the deceased, the criteria would identify which deceased you want acknowledgees for -- perhaps date of death greater than or equal to 1/1/2015. For Output, select Tributes, Tribute Acknowledgees, and then choose the information you want about the Acknowledgee: First Name, Last Name, Preferred Address Address, Sort Key, whatever else you want to know about them. This will include all tribute acknowledgees, even if there were no gifts given to the tribute.

James Andrews · July 2016

Christine McMinn:

James Andrews:

Allison Strickland:

I work for a Hospice organization. We get 4,000+ memorial gifts each year. Many times the acknowledgee is not a consituent. I would like to include the acknowledgees in a acquistion mailing. Since they aren't constituents and they "live' on the tribute. Is there a way for me to pull them into a mailing list?

Everyone's answers seem to be "we make these people constituents", which may help you in setting policy in the future, but doesn't help you get your solicitation list together now.

If I were you I'd make a query of the memorial gifts you're looking for, and use that as a basis for running Honor Memorial Acknowledgees out of RE:Mail. Choose "send one letter per tribute" on tab 2 and export.

The only problem with doing this is you'd have to do a global change first and temporarily mark all your hon/mems as unacknowledged (note in global change this is different from marking the gift unacknowledged). REMail offers to mark them acknowledged when you're finished the process, so they'll be marked acknowledged again when you're through.

I haven't tested this extensively, but it SHOULD give you a mostly workable name and address list, even if there are some duplicates and/or other extraneous fields to clean up.

N.B.:The usual warnings apply about being careful with global changes and all that.

You should be able to create a gift query and pull the acknowledgee information out that way without having to change any of your gift acknowledgments. You could also use a gift query along those lines to create an import file should you want to create constituent records for the past donors. If you did that, you could retroactively add an attribute like the ones the ladies mentioned in other comments.

Oh, so you can! Good to know -- I don't work with the tribute aspect of RE that much to have dug down through export.

Soliciting Tribute Acknowledgees

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