How are you currently generating thank you letters for your donations? More importantly, how can you generate a thank you letter from a donor that has identified 2 or more Designations and possibly spanning one or multiple Budget Years?
Cloud for Good saw a need in the nonprofit community and decided to fill this gap. Donation Split is a free application that is available on the AppExchange. This easy to install application allows your organization to identify Designations and Budget Years. For example, your organization is actively fundraising for your Annual Fund, Scholarship Fund, or a Children’s Education Fund. It is important to show your donors that you are organized and know where their money is being funneled.
It may also be important for your organization to set goals for each fund or mark a designation as “inactive” once your goal has been met. All of these features are readily available in the Donation Split application.
Now comes the fun part… You never want to limit what your donors can give towards and you most definitely would prefer to send a letter reflecting exactly what the donation was intended for.
Once the donation is saved in salesforce.com you can scroll down to see the Donation Split application. It is easy to enter the amounts for their respective Designation(s) and budget year(s).
Next, save the record and you can see your donation has been sliced and diced as you need it. Select the “+” => navigate to the Designations Tab => select the appropriate Designation and you can see the income generated for that specific fund. This information is dynamically updated in real time. You can even see how far you are from your expected goal for the individual designation (if a goal has been set).
Sending a thank you letter is just as important as tracking the donation correctly in your system. For this we like to use Conga Composer. If you are a nonprofit you are eligible for a nice discount for this powerful application from the Conga Guys and Gals.
It is possible to create a thank you letter template and include the following information on your letter;
- Individual Donor Information from the Organization or from the Household if you are using the NPSP Household Package.
- Designation Information (custom objects)
- Specific information about your organization
Here is a video on how to do everything that I just talked about. They are once again;
- Entering the donation
- Identifying the appropriate designation(s) and budget year(s)
- Generate the thank you letter, download it, print it, and send it via snail mail (it is also possible to send it via email through salesforce.com if you prefer).
Conga offers great phone support and you always talk to a friendly person willing to walk you through your individual use case.
Here is the letter that was used in the video: DonationSplit-CongaLetter-DEMO
