Tribute Gifts

Melanie Reizner:

Hi.  I'd like to find out how other users handle the notification process for tribute gifts.

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  For the honoree or family member of a memorialee, do you send a letter?  A card?  Other format?
  
  
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  Do you use an external program to capture or manipulate the data?
  
  

Other things that you think might be helpful to us?

Do you use the tribute module?  We are a hospice so have tons of these.  We send an acknowldgement letter (done thru merge) that lists the donor who made a donation in their loved one's memory.

Emily Asche:
Patty, Do you have a weekly notification process so that the family acknowledgee does not receive multiple letters per week?

Unfortunately, no.  We send an acknowledgement for each gift.  We chose to do it this way because we have merge fields to add special notes from donor or to let the donor know that the gift was from additional donors.  We've never had a donor tell us that they don't appreciate getting separate notices.

JoAnn Strommen:

We send a letter. Some of the families are in RE but not all and we've chosen not to add family contact for one time gifts.  So sometimes, the acknowledgement to the family is done in RE, other times we just use a template and put in the appropriate data. 

Patty, do you mean family gets separate notices?  Not the donor.  I'm confused. 

When we have a memorial with multiple gifts, we do not send notice to family with each gift.  Just too time consuming.  We do about weekly.  When list is long just include a print out from RE of those gifts with donor data.

Duh, yes I do mean that we've never had a caregiver or family member complain about getting separate acknowledgements.  We just have a system set up when we enter our batches--process the gifts, issue the receipts, then issue acknowledgement letters.  It's a bit time consuming, but we feel like family members are almost like our "alumni" and some day may be potential donors (we don't solicit them for at least 13 months).  But they are the ones who have had the hospice experience.  So we want to cultivate them, not the one time memorial donors.

 Hope this makes more sense.