Marking a Donor as Do Not Acknowledge

Matt Page · July 2015

I'd been assuming that there was a box or something on a constituent's record for people who don't wish to receive an acknowledgement letter, but I can't seem to find it. Obviously there are solicit codes, but I guess I thought there was something that would automatically mark any of their gifts as "Do Not Acknowledge".

I know there's a KB article on automatically notifying gift entry staff that an acknowledgement letter is not required (44072), but that seems a bit clunky.

So am I missing it, or do people just use solicit codes and then change the gifts manually?

Matt

Joshua Bekerman bCLO bCRE · July 2015

We use Attributes for our solicit codes (the actual Solicit Codes field doesn't meet our needs and doesn't have a place for date) and have Solicit Code attribute descriptions like Annual Acknowledgement Only and Do Not Acknowledge.

Then, in Mail - Donor Acknowledgement Letters, we use the attribute filters (tab 5) to exclude anyone with those attributes. This way, even if a gift is incorrectly marked as Not Acknowledged they still won't get a letter.

JoAnn Strommen · July 2015

I like Josh's answer, too.

If you're using solicit code, an attribute or have something entered somewhere on the donor record (or it's a short list that you can just do a 'specific record' criteria query), the business rule suggested by knowledgebase is really not that clunky. You create the query once to identify the records to not receive acknowledgements based on whereever you have the info. Create the business rule for gift entry once and just get a pop-up whenever user is entering a gift on that record.

We have several business rules: gift is at special level, person is soft-credited for pledge on a different record. I find them easy to create and very helpful.

Ryan Hyde · July 2015

We track this via an attribute, and then we have a query looking for that attribute piped into a business rule to create a popup during gift entry that just says "Donor requests no TY letters." The gift entry person then knows to mark their letter type as "no letter" (we require a letter type in every gift). It's pretty simple once you get it set up.

Business rules are pretty great, honestly. Once you get comfortable with them, they can help guarantee a higher degree of compliance with your norms and practices, which means cleaner data, which makes everyone happy (whether they know they care about clean data or not!).

Jenny Norton · July 2015

I like all these responses. It's really giving me some ideas. Right now, I just "know" who doesn't want a letter but it's all in my head and no one else knows. Question - we use the business rules but when I'm entering gifts in a batch, I don't see them. Does anyone else get them in batches and if so, do you know how I make mine show up? Thanks.

Ryan Hyde · July 2015

To get the business rule to pop up a message in a gift batch, you just need to create a new "Gift" business rule in the "User Defined Rules" section. So Config > Business Rules > User Defined Rules > Gift

JoAnn Strommen · July 2015

Ryan's response gives you what to do. You do have to have supervisor/admin rights to set business rules. Also, who gets the business rule pop up can be assigned to certain user groups or system wide. There are a number of different categories of business rules. You can have them for opening a record that is inactive or deceased. You can have them for gifts/batch. And several other options. One of the most useful rules I think is for gifts telling us when constituent has a pledge - do we want to apply payment to it?

Matt Page · July 2015

Thanks everyone. I guess that more or less confirms what I suspected. Until yesterday I'd just assumed that something more "magical" was already happening or that it could be if we wanted, but I guess what some of you have outlined above is easy enough. Thanks,

Matt

Linda Allen · July 2015

Jenny Norton:

I like all these responses. It's really giving me some ideas. Right now, I just "know" who doesn't want a letter but it's all in my head and no one else knows. Question - we use the business rules but when I'm entering gifts in a batch, I don't see them. Does anyone else get them in batches and if so, do you know how I make mine show up? Thanks.

Jenny you can set up a business rule to flag you when you enter a gift for this person, I have one that says see constituent note for the handful of donors that have given us specific instructions on where to designate all their gift. The business rule is called gift instructions and the note is in the comment section for the attribute for the gift instructions business rule. The rule is in the User Defined rules, gift rule

Susan Chomsky · July 2015

We enter all gifts through batch. I use a solicit code Do Not Acknowledge and can view the field in batch with the "View > Constituent Record" and "Constituent > Define Constituent Fields" select "Solicit Code." Then those gifts are marked NO LETTER and DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE. This prevents the letter from populating but we still get envelopes for each entry. How can I filter for envelopes based on batch entry fields? Thanks, Susan

Marking a Donor as Do Not Acknowledge

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