Sending Thank You/Tax Letters to Donors who request Email Only

Ann Blanchard · July 2015

Hi all,

We have been getting more requests for no paper mail and/or email only. Our current procedures include exporting and then merging the letters in Word. We have to print the letters and then scan the ones that will need to be emailed. It seems a bit redundant and contrary to a lot of donor wishes who want the e-copy so as to reduce paper waste.

I have a few questions regarding this topic:

1. How are you handling "email only" requests?

2. How do you send out thank you letters via email?

3. We want to make this an automated process, but are not sure quite how to do so. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Jen Claudy · July 2015

We generally mail acknowledgement letters, even to constituents who have requested electronic only. That's the only paper mail we send, but we also don't have very many of these requests (yet!). And our CEO personally signs and usually notes each one.

As far as emailing acknowledgement letters without the added steps of printing and scanning, I suggest that you create a letterhead template in Word, use that to generate your letters (including the appropriate signature), and then print to a pdf. If you use your normal process, but do it once for the printed letters and once for the pdf/emailed letters, it should go fairly smoothly. (It really depends on the volume of gifts you receive.)

Another benefit...we are entering year 5 of 100% electronic filing. When our acknowledgement letters are signed, we scan them all, mail the originals, and add the scans to the scans of the gift paperwork and attach to the Media Tab in RE (with the Gift ID typed in the Media Record's Title field). The hardcopy gift paperwork is kept in a box until that fiscal year's audit is complete, and then it is shredded (and we haven't ever needed any of it for the audit, the scans suffice).

JoAnn Strommen · July 2015

If donor requests email receipt (very, very few to date) I am printing letter, getting signature (exec often adds personal note), scanning and emailing it to donor. If as a donor, I requested email, I wouldn't be real happy to get mailed one. I haven't taken time yet to create letterhead template - will be at some point. Did get set up to do email receipts. This year have had several requests for bills/invoices by email so will be lookig at creating template for that also. Most donors don't realize the extra work involved to give their request for email receipt for a paper check gift or even not receipting.

Jennifer, how often do you need / refer to the receipts that you've scanned? I'm exhausted just reading all the steps that your org goes to printing, scanning all, attaching, etc.for this and other processes. I'm so glad all that is not required of me. We just keep the Word file of the merged letters/receipts that we print for reference. I put batch # in file name and can easily look up a receipt if needed by looking for file that matches batch number on gift record.

John Heizer · July 2015

Since RE first added a "phone type" of email (and the ability to send email from within RE) I've said that it needs to be treated as another address type and become part of all mail processing so you could chose that if the Constituent has an email address send the mail via email, otherwise use the street address.

Lisa Ricci · July 2015

I'm trying to set up e-Receipting through the Mail function for our donors who request their receipt electronically. At this point I have yet to be successful in completing the mail merge. I currently have a case open with BB tech support. I've spent no less than 6 weeks trying to fix whatever the problem is that prevent the merge. I get a command error message when I select "Send as eReceipt". Has anyone had this problem and was able to correct it? It sounds very labor intensive to scan and individually email the gift receipts and would much prefer to use the RE mail function designed for eReceipting.

Jen Claudy · July 2015

I should first clarify that we don't provide an option for our constituents to sign up for Electronic Only...just if they take the initiative to make that request. There are probably 8 in our database, total. We treat it, at present, as a request for electronic communications of mailings, not of individual, custom correspondence. I will resist providing that option until I have a workable plan in place for dealing with electronic acknowledgements.

As for our electronic filing, we do refer to the Media Records fairly frequently. And it's so much easier than pulling (or storing) paper files...or photocopying and filing the signed acknowledgement letters. Plus, our fundraisers can do this on their own, quite easily. Our Xerox machines scan directly to a network folder, so scanning the gift paperwork is really the only additional step and it's not too bad. I am anxiously awaiting Media Record accessibility in RE:NXT, which will hopefully make the process that much simpler. It was a simple process that became slightly more complicated when we moved to RE:NXT, as that move requires being Hosted, and being Hosted altered the process.

Sheryl Sweet · July 2015

You can send them as an "Email Merge Letter" instead of having to print and scan, add the signature as a picture directly into the letter.

If you haven't done it before, here's a link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/294694

I've used this numerous times and it saves each letter as a seperate email in your sent box.

Ann Blanchard · July 2015

Also, how do you set up or designate those that are paper vs. email thank you letters? As in, when you are getting ready to merge your letters, how do you know who receives the paper and who gets the email? Or do you seperate those people already by putting them into different batches? Sorry if the question is a bit vague.

Based on some of the answers above, I was thinking about adding an email line after the address block on the letters and then setting up a preferred address with just the email. This would be a visual cue that the letter would need to be emailed vs paper mailed. However, this would still mean sending the email letters seperately.

I like the idea of doing an email merge, but I do not know how you have seperated out the people who are email only vs paper mail in a single batch?

Thanks for all the comments above and any future tips!!

Nicole S · July 2015

I don't have many of these, but I have set up a process that seems to work.

If the donor simply does not want acknowledgement, I use a business rule and mark the gift do not ack. Although, it is my preference to acknowledge these gifts anyway.

I have a solicit code on these constituents "Email Ack Only" or whatever and we note in the reference field that we should not mail the letter. I exclude this from my run of acknowledgement letters usings filters. I let RE mark all the gifts in this run as acknowledged.

Then we are left with the e-acks. I usually only have these a few times a year and keep a little panel on my acknowledgment dashboard to look out for them. For some of the gifts, this can vary because they are large or personal and the director would to personalize, I run a seperate letter that is hand signed and scanned and the PDF is emailed.

I do keep the solicit code filter on when I run envelopes. THis way an envelope will not be printed and when stuffing you are left with a letter and no envelope. This helps to indicate to any staff doing this in my absence that there is something out of the ordinary about this letter. They should then be able to check the gift record or whatever and figure out that this one doesn't go in the mail. Doesn't seem like a big deal if this letter also goes in the mail, but I have some very adamant donors who do not want this mailed.

For those remaining that don't fall in to this category, I run the through e-receipts.

Sending Thank You/Tax Letters to Donors who request Email Only

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