Tributes

Shellie Kioutas · May 2017

I have recently taken over Tibutes (IMO/IHO) and I am looking to streamline our process. I would love to know how others handle their tributes?

Shellie M. Kioutas | Development Operations Associate
Semper Fi Fund | America's Fund
c. (256) 503-4005
www.semperfifund.org | www.americasfund.org

Ryan Hyde · May 2017

I'm going to assume you have the tribute module for this.

Every HM gift gets applied to the correct tribute (let me know if you don't know how to do this part). The person who will be notified is added as a relationship, if they're not already there, and then selected as the person to be notified from within the gift tribute.

Once a week (twice when we have time), we run mail through Mail > Honor/Memorial Acknowledgements, and in that process we mark the tributes as acknowledged.

This is a super duper simplified version of the actual process, because if you've ever actually handled setting up a brand new tribute on a brand new record with a brand new relationship, you know that there can be a couple dozen clicks involved in plugging everything in. I have heard of some orgs using custom gift attributes to try to streamline this, but there can be some problems with that (marking acknowledged in bulk comes to mind - not impossible, but not obvious either). I prefer to use the tools RE provides in the way they were intended as doing so produces the most consistent results, and there's all sorts of stock documentation in the knowledgebase and BBU on how to do this.

Jen Claudy · May 2017

I think it depends on the volume of tribute gifts you receive, and whether the majority are single-instance.

My previous jobs (the last 3) had a very low volume, and of those, most were single-instance...meaning we'd receive a $20 check in memory of someone who we had no connection to at all. So we opted to bypass the Tribute Module and track them on Gift Attributes. If we even had an address to send a notification to, it was entered on a Gift Note (and relationship links to the donor, if there were existing records in RE for anyone else connected). Those letters were done manually anyways and the Gift Attribute then pulled into our lists for the Annual Report tribute lists. Very manual process, but for a low volume, once you set up a system (and document it!), it's not bad...in my opinion, it's easier/faster/more efficient than struggling with the Tribute Module.

If you have a high volume, definitely read the materials that Ryan suggested, learn the Tribute Module, and use it as intended. As you go, you may find adjustments you can make to customize your process for your org.

ShawnAlis Cusato · May 2017

Every HM gift gets applied to the correct tribute (let me know if you don't know how to do this part). The person who will be notified is added as a relationship, if they're not already there, and then selected as the person to be notified from within the gift tribute.

I will admit I don't know how to do this part. I came from a manual enviroment like Jen describes and while I'm not the primary gift entry person, I am the primary clean-up person so finding correct procedures that will eliminate problems later is important to me. Where do you suggest I begin?

Ryan Hyde · May 2017

The process is a little unweildy. I recommend figuring out your keyboard shortcuts for as much of this as possible.

There's a pretty good KB article here: https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/46265

If some of that doesn't make sense or you need further clarification, post here again and I'll do my best.

ShawnAlis Cusato · May 2017

Really appreciate it. I'll check it out.

Shellie Kioutas · May 2017

Ryan Hyde:

The process is a little unweildy. I recommend figuring out your keyboard shortcuts for as much of this as possible.

There's a pretty good KB article here: https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/46265

If some of that doesn't make sense or you need further clarification, post here again and I'll do my best.

Ryan,

Thank you, this is great. How do you then process or handle tribute acknowledgment?

Ryan Hyde · May 2017

For that part, you'll want to use the Mail module > Honor/Memorial Acknowledgements. This works very much like the Donor Acknowledgement Letter section of Mail, but it's looking for unacknowledged tributes instead of unacknolwedged gifts. You can set up a mail merege within the module itself for your specific acknolwedgement, or if you prefer you can export a spreadsheet which you can use in a mail merge outside of RE. Either solution is fine, and either process allows you to mark the tributes as having been acknolwedged.

There's another good KB article on that: https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/74958

Read that over and shoot me more followup questions if need be.

Kim Berry 2 · October 2021

Adding to this conversation because those who responded here may have thoughts or ideas on how to handle this. How do you prevent tribute letters from being sent repeatedly when the initial tribute was created as the result of a recurring gift? We're hearing from those who are honored that they don't need a letter every month.

Ryan Hyde · October 2021

Great question! This was a new problem for us as we recently switched to an all-in-one donation form system that allows for HM recurring gifts.

The way I've been handling this is to delete the tribute from the recurring gift itself, after the batch has been committed. This leaves the tribute on just the first installment, so there should be no room for duplicate acknowledgements.

Another solution would be to edit the query you use for the Include parameters in your mail module to exclude any recurring gift pay-cash transactions. So you'd be left with a system that only recognizes cash, pledge pay-cash, and recurring gifts. And pledges I suppose, though I've never added a tribute to a pledge, so you may want to edit this further.

If you don't already use an input query, then it should be pretty straight forward to set one up, plug it in, and forget about it.

Spring Velazquez · October 2021

I'm also the data cleanup person and the tributes around here are a mess. I've never had an issue with them like this, but my new org is just a month post-conversion with a consultant that just wanted the job done so training/data integrity weren't at the forefront of this migration. As a result I don't even know how these tributes are getting in the system or why. In prior positions the process was always to review the gifts for batch to do any pre-gift entry work that was needed (like adding tributes). I still can't figure out how things are done here and it's giving me gray hair ?

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