Show Receipt Amount Rather Than Gift Amount in Donor Acknowledgement Letters

Note: This post applies to Blackbaud Europe customers only.

There are sometimes instances when you would like to show the receipt amount in The Raiser's Edge Donor Acknowledgement letters rather than the gift amount. It may be because the money received is less than the donor gave, due to agency fees for example. In this scenario you could set the gift amount as the actual money received and the receipt amount as the full amount donated.

So let’s say the donor gives you £10 and fulfilled by an agency or PAYE or similar, who levy a charge of 40 pence.  In this case the gift amount is £9.60, but you want to thank the donor for the full amount so you could set the receipt amount as £10.

To ensure that the receipt amount can exceed the gift amount you would:

1.   Go to Config, Business Rules and click on Activity options which is a subset of Gift Options.

2.  On the right hand side of the screen remove the tick from ‘Do not allow receipt amount to exceed gift amount’

Then, when adding the gift, we suggest that you setup a different letter code as it is assumed that most thank you letters will be based on the gift amount and the new letter code will be used for those thank you letters that will be based on the receipt amount.

The new letter code can be setup in Config, Letters, Gift option. As this letter code is to be used in Donor Acknowledgement Letters, there is no need at this time to create an associated export when adding the new letter code; this would only be used if you produce a one-off letter from the actual gift, rather than producing letters in mass via Donor Acknowledgement Letters. For more information, refer to: What is the difference between creating letters in Mail and in creating them in Config, Letters?

When the gift or gifts have been added, you can then setup the appropriate letter in Donor Acknowledgement Letters.

On the Fields to Include tab, expand Gift on the left hand Available Fields list and move Receipt Amount (donated currency) to the right hand list of Fields to Export.

Then, if you are adding this letter to an existing Donor Acknowledgement conditional merge, follow the conditional mail merge steps in How to create thank you letters to add the new letter for the letter code on these gifts.

When inserting The Raiser’s Edge fields remember to select Receipt Amount rather than gift amount.

If you have a separate Donor Acknowledgement Letter setup for each letter code, using a simple merge, you would create a new Donor Acknowledgement letter in Mail and select the new letter code on the Filters tab, remembering to again include the receipt amount to be used in the letter on the Fields to Include Tab.

See How to create thank you letters for more information, which also include a useful demonstration.