Donation Acknoweldgements: Send Year End Thank You Letters

Donations: Send Year End Thank You Letters 

1. Year End Thank You Letters are a special type of donation acknowledgment letter; YE Thank Yous serve as a year end tax receipt for your donors as they list all the donations made by the donor during that year.
2. The system will define the “year” as your fiscal year (which you set on Main Menu: Settings. Financial). If you operate on a calendar year fiscal year, the system will consider the year January 1 to December 31^st. If you operate on a state fiscal year, then the system will consider the year July 1 to June 30.
3. To get started, first make sure you have a template in the Year End Thank You category of the template manager (Main Menu: Create New Communication: My Templates: Year End Thank You) (follow this tutorial on working with templates to create or edit a template in the Letters category).
4. Click on Communication form the left hand menu to pull the sub menu and click on Create New Communication.

   

5. On the My Templates tab, scroll down to the Year End Thank You

   

6. Hover over the template and select Use.

   

7. Make any edits you want to your Year End Thank You letter template (selecting Use in step #6 makes a copy of your letter template, so any changes you make here will be just to this version/instance of the letter and will not change the underlying/base template).

   

8. If you need to leave while editing your letter, click the Edit button next to the file name and give the file a name.

   

   

9. Then click the Back button in the upper righthand corner. You will be asked if you want to save this work in progress in your drafts folder. Click Yes.

   

10. When you want to return to your work in progress, you will find it on Create New Communication: My Templates: Drafts

    

11. To pick up where you left off, simply hover over the template and select Edit.

    

12. Year End Thank You letters have a special placeholder called “Transaction Grid” – this will create a table within your letter that lists all donations the contact has made during the fiscal year. Be sure to include this in your letter template.

    

13. The Year End Thank You Transaction Grid shows the Gift Date, Program, Campaign, Gift Amount, Tax Deductible Amount, and any Tribute Information for every gift made during the selected calendar year. Please Note: No matter where you put the transaction grid placeholder in your template, the transaction grid will appear at the END of your letter (b/c the transaction grid length will vary by donor/letter (by number of donations each donor made), there is no way to control the page breaks/flow of text that would appear after the transaction grid (some donors might end up with one sentence or line that wraps to the next page due to having more donations than the other donors in the batch). For simplicity and best appearance, the transaction grid will, therefore, appear at the end of the letter).

    

14. Once you have finished setting up your letter, click the Save button in the lower righthand corner (the system does have an auto save function that will save your work periodically but be sure to Save before moving to the next screen).

    

15. Next, click the green Go to Next Step button in the upper righthand corner.

    

16. This will take you to the Generate Year End Thank You Letters. Please note: from this point forward, if you need to leave your work in progress and return later, you will find your draft Thank You Letter in Communications: My Templates: Drafts.
    

    

17. If you need to go back and edit your letter template/body, you can hover over the preview on the right and select Edit.

    

18. The system will assign a default Batch Name, which you can change to something more descriptive if you like.

    

19. In the Send Email To field, indicate the email address of the staff person who should be notified once the letters are generated/ready to be sent/downloaded (if there are less than 100 letters in the batch, the letters will be generated immediately. If there are more than 100 letters in the batch, then the system will generate the letters in the background and email you when they are ready to send/be downloaded).

    

20. Select the Year (of the donations) that you wish to acknowledge.

    

21. The recipients that are returned are the donors who made a donation during that year (as defined by your fiscal year settings) AND WHO HAVE NOT YET RECEIVED A YEAR END THANK YOU FOR THAT YEAR. If a donor was included in a previous batch for that same year, they will not be pulled into Year End Letters again.

    

22. You can click on the number of recipients to see the list of names You cannot interact with the list of names; that is, you cannot select someone from the list to exclude. To exclude contacts from the recipients list, you would need to use the filter/advanced search function (see next step) to narrow down your list, such as “Contact Name IsNot Joe Smith” (for one name) or “ContactName Not In Joe Smith, Betty Grable, Clark Kent, Sammy Hagar” (to enter several names). [please note, if sending the letters via email, you will be able to delete individual contacts/letters out of the batch before sending and if you sending by postal mail you will be able to skip printing those letters, so it is not necessary to exclude contacts from the batch at this point; we simply note that it can be done if you prefer to do it at this point).

    

23. You can use the filter/advanced search to narrow down your list of recipients (if desired; this is not required). For instance, if I wanted to send my example letter to 2017 donors who were also members, I could add a filter for “Contact Type is Member” or if I wanted to send my letter to my 2017 donors who donated more than $500 total, I could add the criteria “Donation Amount is Greater than 500” and also select “Sum” from the grouping option to indicate that I want $500 total giving. You can use the filters for almost any criteria you might want – lapsed or expired members, people who have attended a certain event (or didn’t attend a certain event), etc.

    

24. Once you enter your criteria, select Search to update the list of results.

    

25. Once you have your letter and list of recipients the way you want it, click the Generate button in the lower right hand corner. Please Note: from this point forward (once you "generate" the batch, if you need to leave your work in progress and return later, you will find your generated batch on the Communications: Pending tab (that is, the draft will have been moved out of the My Templates: Drafts folder. Click the drop down to the right and select Process to pick up where you left off).

    

26. The Send Batch screen will open up.

    

27. Select whether you wish to send the letters via email or postal mail via the Communication Preference toggle on the right.

    

28. If sending by email, those without an email address on file or whose communication preference for email is set to No or Not Set will have their green email button grayed out. You will not be able to send the letters until every person in the batch has their email communication preference set to Yes and they have an email address to send to.

    

29. Click on a grayed out email button to add an email address to the record or change the contact’s email communication preference.
30. When changing communication preference, the system will ask if you want to update the preference just for this one letter (temporarily set it to yes so you can send the letter) or change it to yes permanently.

    

31. For any contacts you with to remove from the batch, click the drop down to the right and select Delete (this just removes the contact from the batch; it does not delete the contact record).

    

32. If you wish to edit any of the individual letters (for instance, to add a private/customized message or note), select Edit from the drop down on the right.

    

33. This will open up the Edit Letter window; Make your changes to the letter and click Save.

    

34. Once everyone in the batch has an email address and Yes for email communication preference (either temporarily or permanently), the Send Email fields and button will become available.

    

35. In the Send Email To field, fill in the email address of the staff member who should be notified when the email has completed sending (if the batch has less than 100 emails it will be sent immediately and no notification will be sent to the staff person; if the batch has more than 100 emails, then the system will need to use the bulk email gateway and process emails more slowly – in this case, a notification email when sending is complete will be sent).

    

36. Fill in the Sender Name, Sender Email address, and Subject Line for your email.

    

37. Year End Thank You letters sent via email will be sent as a PDF attachment to an email. Fill in the email Body text with a message to the donor such as “Thank you for your support this year; attached please find your year end tax receipt.”

    

38. If using placeholders, make sure to select the placeholder from the dropdown menu and click the plus button.
39. 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. 
    
40. Click Send Email to send the letters to your contacts.

    

41. The batch will appear on your Pending communications tab with the status Sent for Processing. While the batch is processing, you cannot make any changes (you cannot cancel the emails, edit the letters, etc.).

    

42. Once the letters have finished sending, you will find the batch on the History communications tab; the status will be Processed (meaning the emails have been sent).

    

43. For letters to be sent via postal mail, all contacts will need to have a mailing address and their Send Mail communication preference set to Yes before you can generate the print letters. Repeat steps #27-#29 above to fix your recipient list until everyone in the batch has their mail communication settings correct or they have been removed from the batch.

    

44. If you want to edit any individual letter (for instance, to add a personal note), click the drop down to the right and select

    

45. To remove someone from the batch, select Delete from the drop down on the right (this will remove them from the batch but not delete them from the Year End Letters module and will not delete the contact).
46. You can download/preview individual letters in the batch by selecting Download PDF or Download DOC from the drop down on the left. Keep in mind, this function is just to preview individual letters. Printing out a letter and leaving at this point will NOT record on the contacts’ record that they were sent a thank you letter. An entry is not added to the contact’s Engagement History until you click the Process button.

    

47. Once the batch is ready to be generated, fill in the Send Email To field with the name of the staff person who should be alerted when the batch is ready to be downloaded. If there are less than 100 letters in the batch, the batch will be generated immediately. If there are more than 100 letters in the batch, the system will work in the background to create the letters and send you an email when the file is ready.

    

48. Select the Format you want the letters in – PDF or MS Word.

    

49. Click the blue Process

    

50. If the system processes the letters immediately (because there are less than 100 letters in the batch), you will be prompted to open or save the resulting Zip file. Inside of it you will find one file that contains all of your letters.

    

51. Once the batch is processed, it will move to the communications History From here, you can download and print out the letters, generate matching envelopes, and view a list of recipients by selecting from the drop down on the right.

    

    

52. If you ever need to resend the letters via email or postal mail, go to the History tab, click the drop down to the right and select the option that you want.