Acknowledging vs. Receipting

Tiffany,

These are great questions and definitely something many orgs scratch their heads and try to figure out. It really depends on your constituents. If they are familiar with receiveing certain responses after each donation then you'll want to address any change should you reduce the amount or type of post-donation response.

Now when you talk about these "thank you" letters, are you referring to online gifts, offline gifts, or both? In today's time most orgs don't do paper thank you letters for online gifts. The autoresponder and then any post-donation stewardship email usually will suffice. You're communicating with your donor to show your gratitude but the cost is much less. Plus, if your donors are like me, I hate going to the mailbox and would rather get all my stuff via email. Now saying that, those same orgs often have a giving amount that triggers the need for a postal letter. I've seen that amount be $250+ or $500+. Again it depends on your donors and your org. I would say that if you have an older donor base (50+) they may still want postal acknowledgements. But gen X, Y and Z are just as satisfied with an email.

As for sustaining donors I don't know of any org that sends a postal letter each month. They might send an year-end wrap-up or something but that's about it. Some orgs even simply provide a dynamic page where donors can go and see all of their sustaining gifts. Here is a thread that shows how you can achieve that.

Best rule is, when in doubt, ask your donors. Ask them if they want monthly postal letters. You can automatically group those who want them and then run a report each month. But it's really about testing and asking.

I hope this helps!

Kent

Tiffany Alioto:
Kent,



Thanks for the input. I do think it would benefit us to at least not paper acknowledge the online gifts.



We currently send an ack/receipt to every donation over $5 that comes through our doors. So my original question covers both offline and online gifts.



I've been hearing a lot of webinars and discussion that we should always provide a "thank you" and some kind of followup to keep donors engaged. I'm til really interested on possibly getting more feedback from other members of the community who are part of a non-profit org.



As for our response, we do get a considerate amount of repeat donations through the reply slip with the receipt/ack. But I sometimes wonder if it may put other donors off and we would actually see a great increase of 2nd, 3rd, repeat giving if those passive asks weren't with the "thank you"/receipt? Any thoughts?

One option I'd recommend is trying to convert your offline donors to become online donors. So maybe instead of inserting an envelope you include a sentence or two about the effeciency of donating online and how it provides for electronic tax receipts. I'd recommend stressing how online giving today can often be more secure than sending a check through the mail AND how it costs you less in staff hours to process an online gift. Converting donors to become dual-channel donors should be every org's goal.

Kent

In the Large gift notification list area, enter the email address of each person who should be sent the email when a donor gives a gift over the amount specified. Separate the addresses with commas or press Enter to add each one on its own line.

If you want to receive a notifcation for any gift, just make the dollar amt $1.