Donation Acknowledgement: Send Acknowledgements (New Communications Interface)

Communications: Send Donation Acknowledgement Letters

Send Donation Acknowledgements
Edit Acknowledgement Letter Template
Create a New Template
Send Acknowledgement Queue
Download Donation Information
Send Acknowledgement Letters via E-Mail
Send Acknowledgement Letters via Mail
Communication History / Contact Timeline

This tutorial will cover how to send donation acknowledgement letters through the system.
Before you send donation acknowledgements, you will need to have created donation acknowledgement letter templates, configured default acknowledgement settings, and recorded some donations in your system. For more information, please see the tutorials on Managing Templates, configuring Acknowledgement Settings, and configuring Funds, Programs, and Campaigns.

Send Acknowledgements
To send donation acknowledgements, start by clicking on the Communications from the Left Menu and, on the sub-menu, click on Create New Communication to start the process from the template index screen OR select Send Acknowledgements to go directly to the generate acknowledgements screen (skip to step #10).
From the template index screen, select either the My Templates (to access user-created templates) or System Templates (to access default “out of the box” templates) tab at the top of the screen.
Then scroll down to the Acknowledgements category or select the Acknowledgements filter on the left.
Any templates for which there are donations queued up and waiting to send letters will have an orange bar at the bottom, indicating the number of acknowledgement letters waiting to be sent.
Hover over these templates and click Process to enter the Send Acknowledgements area and generate the letters.

Editing an Acknowledgement Letter Template
If you wish to edit a donation acknowledgement letter template, hover over the template before using, click Edit (available for My Templates only) or Copy (equivalent to “Save As” in Microsoft Word). Please Note: If there are any letters queued up for a template (the orange bar across the bottom of the template's thumbnail), then the Edit function will not be available. You must first generate all the waiting letters or move them to another template in order to copy the template.

Create a New Template
If you wish to create a new template, chose Copy. This will take you into the template creation/set-up area. See our tutorial on working with templates for more information on creating donation acknowledgement templates.
After selecting Process, you will enter the Generate Acknowledgements area, which will show you all current, unacknowledged donations or donors.

Send Acknowledgement Queue
The Template list on the left hand side shows you the donations awaiting acknowledgement grouped by the acknowledgement template assigned to the donation. All donations will automatically have been assigned templates, based on either the default settings for acknowledgements, or the program, campaign, or funds to which given donations may be linked, if you assigned donation acknowledgement letter templates to the program, campaign fund. The first category [All (Excludes Skipped Acknowledgments]) is view only and is not actionable (you cannot generate any acknowledgements from this list, though you can move donations from the skipped queue to a template/category to generate letters that you accidentally marked as to skip).
Please Note: if you have sent a donation acknowledgement via email to a donor and the email bounced/is not deliverable, the donation acknowledgement will be moved to the skipped queue.
The system uses a hierarchy to determine which letter template is assigned to a donation when there is more than one eligible template (for example, if you assigned a program and a campaign to the donation and both the program and the campaign have their own letter templates assigned). The hierarchy is:
- Program
- Campaign
- Fund
- Default Settings
If you find that the wrong template is being assigned to your donations, it is due to your configurations/settings and the hierarchy above.
You can view the acknowledgements waiting to be sent by gift or by donor. Click the By Gift/By Donor toggle button to switch views.
You can narrow down the acknowledgements presented by using the filters. Click Show Filter in the upper right hand corner to bring up the filters list. You can filter by communication preference, donation date, campaign, event, donor type (individual or organization), fund, gift source, program, and donation amount.
To hide the filter, click the Hide Filter button in the upper right.
To change the type of donations you are viewing, click on one of the acknowledgement type tabs on the top (Primary, Soft Credit, Tribute, or Tribute Cards).
The Soft Credit tab will only show if you set soft credit donors to receive a separate letter in the Acknowledgement Settings on the Settings menu.
To start a new acknowledgement batch, start by selecting the template list on the left for which you wish to generate acknowledgements
Create a name for the batch in the Batch Name field, or use the suggested default name (which will use template name + date generated).
Using the Apply to Selected button in the lower right, you can select individual items in the batch (multiple items can be checked) and then change the template assigned to a donation or mark a donation acknowledgement as skipped to take it out of the queue of acknowledgements to be generated.

Download Donation Information
Donation information can be downloaded to Excel (to be used for a manual mail merge, for example) rather than generating letters from inside the system from the Generate Acknowledgement Index Screen using the Download button in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. This is OPTIONAL. To generate letters directly from within the system, skip to next section.

To download the acknowledgement data (rather than generate letters from within the system), select the acknowledgement category/queue that you want to download the data for from the list on the left of the main acknowledgements screen. Remove any donations/donors from the batch using the "Change Template" or "Skip Acknowledgement" options from the Actions menu in the lower right.
When you have the list of donations you wish to download finalized, click the Download drop down menu in the lower right and choose whether you wish to simply download the data to Excel (but leave the acknowledgements in the acknowledgement queue to be generated from within the system later (or mark as skipped)) or Download Data and Process to download the data and mark the donations as sent/processed (this will move the acknowledgements to the Communications: History queue). NOTE: To clear your skipped acknowledgement queue, you can Download Data and Process or Assign a template, generate and process as how you should with regular donation acknowledgment.
A pop up window will appear. Select the Output Template for the acknowledgement data from the list of output templates you have configured.
Please Note: the output templates being referenced here are EXCEL FILE FORMATS (not donation acknowledgement letter templates). That is, you are being asked to select the "template" for your excel file. The list that populates here is from the excel file output templates configured by your users on Main Menu: Fundraising: Configurations: Acknowledgement Output Templates.
After selecting the excel file format/template, click the black Process button. You will receive a green validation message that your file has been sent for processing. Generating the excel file to download is an offline process. You will receive an email when the process has finished and the file is ready to be downloaded.
When you receive the email that the file is ready to be downloaded, click the link in the email to be taken to the Communications: History screen (or proceed there directly). Click the drop down to the right of the batch name and select Download. Rather than downloading a PDF or Word document of formatted letters, you'll be presented with an Excel file to download. Use this file as the data file for an offline mail merge process.

To send acknowledgments from within the system (rather than downloading the data), once you have the donations you wish to acknowledge together in a batch with the appropriate template, either select individual donations within the category and select Generate Selected Item(s) on the Apply to Selected button in the lower right-hand corner or select the Generate All button to create the batch using all donations or donors shown.
This will open the acknowledgement processing center.
Donation acknowledgement letters will be sent together, as a batch, either via snail mail or email. The batch will default to the communication method associated with the template you use (print-optimized or email-optimized template) and the contacts’ communication preferences.
You can change the batch’s send method by toggling the Communication Preference slider in the upper right-hand corner.

Send Acknowledgement via Email
To send contacts an acknowledgement letter via email, the contact must have a valid email address and the contact’s communication preference for email MUST be set to “yes.” If any of these conditions are not met, the contact’s Set Preference button for email will be grayed out. You will not be able to send the batch until you update the contact’s record or remove the contact from the batch.
You can add an email address or change the contact’s communication preferences by clicking on the Email button in the Set Preferences column. This will bring up a pop up box that will allow you to enter a new email address and/or update the contact’s send email communication preferences. The system gives you the option to update the contact’s send email communication preference just for this one email or for all emails going forward.
To remove an acknowledgement from the current batch, click on the Edit drop-down to the right of the acknowledgement and select Delete.
This will return the acknowledgement to the Generate Acknowledgement screen to be included in a future batch (it does not delete the acknowledgement, does not mark the acknowledgement as skipped, does not delete the contact, and does not delete the donation).
You can edit each individual letter that will be sent out (to further customize/personalize each letter) by selecting Edit from the drop down menu to the right of each item in the batch.

Send Acknowledgement via Mail
If sending letters vial Mail, you can download a preview of individual letters as PDF or Doc by select the Download PDF or Download DOC options from the drop down on the right. THIS IS A PREVIEW FUNCTION ONLY. This is NOT how you send the letters. Downloading the preview in Word/PDF is just to spot check the letter, but the batch is not marked as sent in the system until you click the blue Process button (see next steps) and process the entire batch. Furthermore, once you "process" the batch, a zip file with ALL the letters contained in one file will be generated (rather than forcing you to print each letter out individually, one at a time).
If generating print/hard copy letters, choose a file output method (Word or PDF).
If your batch has less than 100 letters in it, the letters/file will be created immediately. If your batch has more than 100 letters, the batch will generate in the background. You will be emailed when the file is ready to download. Enter an email address of the staff person who should be notified when the letters are ready to download in the Send Email To box.
Click the Process button to generate the letters. If generating less than 100 letters, a box will pop up allowing you to save the letters to your computer or to open the file. Clicking process will also add the fact a donation acknowledgement letter was sent to each contact’s Engagement History on the contacts’ records.
If generating email letters, fill in the Sender Name, Sender Email address, and Subject line of the email.
Donation acknowledgment letters sent via email are sent as PDF attachments to the email. You can edit the body of the email the recipients will receive (the default text for the email body is set in Acknowledgement Settings.)
If using placeholders, select the placeholder from the dropdown and click the plus sign.
The spell checker will help you proofread and will detect the incorrect words or spelling mistakes. Users just need to hover on the marked words for instant correction suggestions or click the dialog icon in the bottom right corner to have the whole text proofread at once. Read this article on How Spell Checker Works to know more details about spell checker.
If you want to be notified once your emails have successfully finished sending, fill out the email address of the staff person who should be notified in the Send Email To box.
Once you have set all required fields, click on the Send Email button, and the emails will be sent for processing. Once the emails finish processing/sending, the fact that a donation acknowledgement was sent will be added to the contacts’ Engagement History on their records.
To see a list of batches that have been created, click on Pending tab in the Communication's sub-menu on the left.
Generated means the batch was created, but not yet sent. Processed means the batch was sent/completed. Processing means it is queued up for sending through the bulk email gateway.
Batches that have been generated but not yet sent can be deleted or processed (processed returns you to the in progress batch to allow you to finish/send it).
Batches that have been sent/processed, can be Deleted (deletes all record that letters were sent and sends all recipients back to the queue to have donation acknowledgements generated)
To print or re-print acknowledgements for a batch, go to History and click on the Download button from the drop down to the right of the appropriate batch.
For mail/hard copy letters, you can print out envelopes for all letters in the batch by selecting Print Envelope from the drop down to the right.
From the Print Envelope pop up, select Choose Template. Then, in the next window, click on/select the correct envelope template, and then select Done.
Finally, click Download from the Print Envelope pop up.

Communication History / Contact Timeline
Sent acknowledgements (whether sent via email or hard copy/snail mail) will show in Main Menu: Communications: History as well as the contact's Timeline.

OR
To see the letter (attachment) that was sent via email to any donor, go to the contact's Timeline, click on the acknowledgment entry, and at the top of the pop up, click on the View Attachment link in the upper left.