Can you access gift letters from the Action Tab?

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Martha Spiegel
Martha Spiegel
Ninth Anniversary 10 Comments 5 Likes Facilitator Level 2
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
I had someone send in a split gift (single check) for sponsorships for 2 separate events. I wanted to send two receipt letters, one from each event. I did the first through the gift entry, and wanted to do the second through the action tab, but was unable to access the receipt letter for the second event. Is there a way to do this? It doesn't come up terribly often, but it would be good to know for when it does.


Thanks!
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  • Ryan Hyde
    Ryan Hyde
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Likes 500 Comments Name Dropper
    I just looked at all the options available, and it doesn't appear that you can save two actions from a single acknolwedgement letter. If you set up a letter to include mail merge info from the letter itself (and not the mail module), you can save that letter as an action, but you can only do that once. The only way to go through the process of adding the letter as an action the second time is to delete the original action, which defeats your purpose.


    For what it's worth, this is yet another reason why I never use the split gift function. In these kinds of cases, the only way to effectively do what you want is to have two separate gifts. And there are other really good reason to never split a gift either, but I won't digress here. 
  • Martha Spiegel
    Martha Spiegel
    Ninth Anniversary 10 Comments 5 Likes Facilitator Level 2
    My intent was to do a separate action directly through the action tab. It wouldn't be connected to the gift, but it would show an additional gift receipt on the same date and I could indicate the reasoning in a note. Unfortunately I could only get to letters specifically created as "Action Letters." For as little as this happens, it's not worth setting up the identical letter in Actions as well as gifts. 
  • Jen Claudy
    Jen Claudy
    Tenth Anniversary 1,500 Likes 1000 Comments Name Dropper
    Can you mark the Gift as Not Acknowledged, change the Letter Code, and run again for the second receipt?  Then add a Gift Note to explain what you did.


    I never saved the letters as Actions, at my last org we scanned the signed letter and filed that scan with the scan of the gift paperwork (on the Gift Record via NXT; we did electronic filing).  But I believe Letters accessible from Actions are different than those accessible from Gifts.  You could open any Letter Template in an Action, remove the text, paste in the text from the 2nd Gift Letter, and save it.  That would, I think, accomplish putting a Gift Letter on an Action.
  • Heather MacKenzie
    Heather MacKenzie
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Likes 1000 Comments Photogenic



    Jen Claudy:

    Can you mark the Gift as Not Acknowledged, change the Letter Code, and run again for the second receipt?  Then add a Gift Note to explain what you did.


    I never saved the letters as Actions, at my last org we scanned the signed letter and filed that scan with the scan of the gift paperwork (on the Gift Record via NXT; we did electronic filing).  But I believe Letters accessible from Actions are different than those accessible from Gifts.  You could open any Letter Template in an Action, remove the text, paste in the text from the 2nd Gift Letter, and save it.  That would, I think, accomplish putting a Gift Letter on an Action.

    Jen, unfortunately, in my experience, it's only possible to create a single gift letter within each gift when saving them to actions.


    Martha, here's what I would recommend trying out.  DO NOT go to the trouble of building a whole action letter in your database just for this one purpose.  If you don't already have an action letter built, DO go create one that is called General Letter or something like that, but don't spend any time writing the letter itself.  (My database has one called "Standard Letter" for this purpose.)  Then, open a new action and choose mailing as your type.   Look down in the lower left corner of your new action window.  You should see this area.....
    619aa03cd370ce4d173e22f7e3b6fa0c-huge-ac


    Now, choose your generic, nothing letter, from your dropdown, and then click the Word icon to the right of the dropdown.  Your "letter" will generate, and look something like this...
    52684589aa58433c557a006389ae0e07-huge-ac


    Now, you can write over this with anything you want to, and voila, there's your 2nd letter!  Even easier would be if you copied the text from the gift letter that you want to use and pasted it over this bare bones stuffs, then just make sure you alter your margins for your letterhead, etc., because this letter will need all that same kind of formatting that you have already built into your gift letters.


    Hope this helps!

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