Acknowledgment Letters/ Pledge Agreements

We don't store acknowledgement letters electronically, but we do put pledge agreements on the media tab. Our feeling is that users may need to see a pledge reminder, but an acknowledgement for a gift isn't generally needed as immediately. We do store those as hard copies.

4 years ago we moved to (almost) 100% electronic filing.


When a gift comes in, the paperwork is scanned and then put in a tray to be filed.  When that tray fills up, it's all moved to a banker's box kept in the cabinet.  That box currently holds paperwork from 2+ fiscal years, so when we add the stuff from the tray to one end of the box, we pull out enough from the other end to make room, and that older paperwork goes in the shred bin.  Our CFO requested that we keep hard copies from the fiscal year until that year's audit is completed, so our box system does this and then some.  The tray just keeps the most recent paperwork more easily accessible, which is handy because of some technical difficulties in RE.


Until we moved to Hosting this past winter, we would put the paperwork scan in a folder on our network, and link it to RE on that constituent's Media Tab (or to more than one Constituent record, if needed).  Then when the acknowledgement letter was signed, it would be scanned (instead of copied) and then mailed.  The scan would then be added to the gift paperwork pdf (open the file from within RE, usually, although you can also edit the pdf from the network drive).  We used the Media Type field to indicate whether a record was waiting for an ack letter scan to be added, which means a query can be used to easily list all of those.  And the pdf files all fit a naming convention: c456789+2015-09+g12345 would be Gift ID 12345 with a Gift Date in Sep 2015 from Constituent ID 456789.  (Files for things other than gifts would have some sort of (brief) description in place of the Gift ID.)


Now that we are Hosted, we have to embed instead of link, and a pdf can't be edited once embedded in RE because it will only open in Adobe Reader (we have Adobe Acrobat installed locally, which allows editing pdfs).  It's a big pain, coupled with the fact that we have 3400+ linked files that have to now be embedded.  So now, instead of adding the ack letter to the gift paperwork scan, we have to open the paperwork file, save it to a local desktop, close the Media record, edit the pdf from the desktop, re-embed the file to RE, and then delete the old file from RE (the one that was just the gift paperwork).  However, my boss would access the gift paperwork regularly, especially when editing and customizing ack letters.  He left the organization last month, so now I'm just keeping the gift paperwork files on my computer until the ack letter scans are ready, and embedding only once.  (We're also short-staffed as far as data entry help, so it's all completely on me right now and I don't have the time to do so many steps.)


RE:NXT (which we've been using since March) will have a (hopefully) better Media system that will be (hopefully) easier to put media into the database, once more (hopefully) allow the same file to be linked to multiple records (embedding means multiple copies of the same file if needing to put it on multiple records), and will (hopefully) allow easier access & editing of files in the database.  I'm very hopeful... 


Even though embedding media means you don't need to maintain a copy on your local computer, I made the choice to keep everything anyways, just in case.  My plan was to keep them for a while, until I was sure nothing would be lost.  Then we had problems with a couple of files that wouldn't open properly and the only remedy was to re-embed them.  So I am now keeping everything, even after embedding.  Since I'm also not sure exactly how RE:NXT Media will work, I want to keep everything in case it's easier to "start fresh" rather than re-convert files already in the system.


More to the point of your question, we access gift paperwork and ack letters fairly regularly (and we're a small organization).  Just this week, a donor (a very generous donor and former board chair) called to ask for a second copy of an ack letter, but the way he worded the request sounded as though he hadn't received the first one.  Our CEO and Development Officer both panicked and didn't trust that RE:NXT was showing that the gift had been acknowledged (even though it was me physically showing them the record in NXT).  If Media was available now in RE:NXT, they could have seen the scan of the actual signed & dated ack letter, which is a much better indicator.  (We do also track print & mail dates on Gift record Attributes, but those aren't visible in NXT yet, either.  That's more to determine how quickly we're turning around acknowledgements and where the delays are occurring.)  In this example, we easily saved the ack letter page (or the whole file, if desired) and emailed it to the donor, which was much faster than re-generating a new letter and mailing it.  And his emailed response clarified that he remembered getting the letter, he just misplaced it.


Our CEO also adds personal, hand-written notes to most ack letters, and it's nice to be able to access those from RE.  We scan and file notes and birthday cards, too, at the CEO's request.  With RE:NXT being so mobile, not relying on paper files is nice.  Having completed one office move (in the same building, just down the stairs) and anticipating a move to another part of town in about a year, not having tons of files to move is quite literally a lightened load.