Creating acknowledgement letters for honor/memorial gifts to the donor

Claire Willingham · November 2017

Hi,

I am having trouble creating a conditional merge letter for an honor/memorial gift to the donor. There seems to be a great system for sending to the acknowledgee but I am not finding a way to insert the "in honor of NAME" into a traditional gift acknowledgement.

For example our letters to a donor that has made a gift in honor of someone says: "...I would like to thank you for your donation of $100 to support the Annual Fund in honor of John Smith."

Is this just something I need to make sure I catch for every letter and just add in by hand?

Karen Stuhlfeier · November 2017

We have a tribute letter in our conditional merge using the fields of "tribute type" and "honor/memorial name." That works well for us.

Ryan Hyde · November 2017

Karen Stuhlfeier:

We have a tribute letter in our conditional merge using the fields of "tribute type" and "honor/memorial name." That works well for us.

We use this exact same method. Works perfectly. Are you just having trouble finding the fields? They're in the Gifts folder, not the H/M folder, which is definitely not obvious.

Christine Cooke 2 · November 2017

Claire Willingham:

Hi,

I am having trouble creating a conditional merge letter for an honor/memorial gift to the donor. There seems to be a great system for sending to the acknowledgee but I am not finding a way to insert the "in honor of NAME" into a traditional gift acknowledgement.

For example our letters to a donor that has made a gift in honor of someone says: "...I would like to thank you for your donation of $100 to support the Annual Fund in honor of John Smith."

Is this just something I need to make sure I catch for every letter and just add in by hand?

You would approach this the same I think, but utilizing different fields depending on whether you have the Tribute Module. If you do not -- you can set up Gift Attribute of IHO/IMO Name and the acknowledgee name, address etc. and drop those fields into a letter. If you have the Tribute Module you would use the coressponding fields in the merge.

Sarah Fitzgerald · November 2017

We use a gift attribute on these gifts and pull it into to the letter with a conditional statement.

Claire Willingham · November 2017

Thanks everyone! We do have the tribute module I just couldn't find those fields to pull into our letters.

Faith Murray · November 2017

Sarah Fitzgerald:

We use a gift attribute on these gifts and pull it into to the letter with a conditional statement.

Sarah, could you please share your conditional statement? We also use Attributes but we use two different merge letters if the donor was a male or female, and a third of the deceased was an alumnus, so that the letter uses the right he/she pronouns. What sort of conditional fields do you use in your letter?

Susan Chomsky · November 2017

Claire Willingham:

Hi,

I am having trouble creating a conditional merge letter for an honor/memorial gift to the donor. There seems to be a great system for sending to the acknowledgee but I am not finding a way to insert the "in honor of NAME" into a traditional gift acknowledgement.

For example our letters to a donor that has made a gift in honor of someone says: "...I would like to thank you for your donation of $100 to support the Annual Fund in honor of John Smith."

Is this just something I need to make sure I catch for every letter and just add in by hand?

We use the the reference field to enter the name and include "reference" in the merge letter. . . . Thank you so much for your recent «Amount» donation in memory of «Reference». We are grateful for your donation during this time of remembrance.

Andrew Ludwell · November 2017

Hi Faith

Have you tried using the IF field instead of a conditional merge? By exporting the gender/sex of the constituent, you can put in an { IF { MERGEFIELD Gender } = "female" "she" "he" }. This would mean when you need to change the letter, you just need to change just one, hopefully simplifying future you's work.

Just a thought...

-Andrew

Nancy Marshall · November 2017

Claire Willingham:

Hi,

I am having trouble creating a conditional merge letter for an honor/memorial gift to the donor. There seems to be a great system for sending to the acknowledgee but I am not finding a way to insert the "in honor of NAME" into a traditional gift acknowledgement.

For example our letters to a donor that has made a gift in honor of someone says: "...I would like to thank you for your donation of $100 to support the Annual Fund in honor of John Smith."

Is this just something I need to make sure I catch for every letter and just add in by hand?

We type "in honor of Joe Smith" in the Reference and then I put the Reference in the letter. That way, no matter which letter we are using, the Reference always pulls that info into the letter.

Heather MacKenzie · December 2017

Claire Willingham:

Hi,

I am having trouble creating a conditional merge letter for an honor/memorial gift to the donor. There seems to be a great system for sending to the acknowledgee but I am not finding a way to insert the "in honor of NAME" into a traditional gift acknowledgement.

For example our letters to a donor that has made a gift in honor of someone says: "...I would like to thank you for your donation of $100 to support the Annual Fund in honor of John Smith."

Is this just something I need to make sure I catch for every letter and just add in by hand?

Once we knew that you have the Tribute Module, all the answers are assuming that you are actually getting that tribute entered onto all the gifts. If it ends up that it's a bigger thing than just you not being able to go find and grab those fields for the letter(s), then check that too, with your gift entry person/people.

Creating acknowledgement letters for honor/memorial gifts to the donor

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