NXT Donation Form Confirmation Email

Margaret Carr

Hello All, I am curious as to how other organizations use the Email Designer on the Confirmation Page of NXT Donation Form Set Up. I have been reading best practices in bb documentation and it reads not to use confirmation email as a receipt. Merge fields exist on designer to create a nicer looking receipt/acknowledgement, we can also add tax language at the bottom of email. If user receives automated default content which has transaction details. What do you suggest using as content for Email Designer confirmation? After constituent receives generic content, should we use workflow to email nicer acknowledgement with tax language a few days later?

Kylea Johnson

@Margaret Carr
Here's how I use mine, simple notification to assure the donor that they donated what they intended to donate and didn't typo or anything. = P Yes we still physically mail our receipts! As far as workflow with an e-receipt I'd use the “Receipts” section in BB, though word to the wise, you don't get to retain copies of the e-receipts, thus why we still physically mail ours.

Carrie Aranda

@Margaret Carr We use the confirmation email as a confirmation of the gift with a nice thank you message. But, we also put our name, address, tax id, etc in the footer of the email so that the donor has the information right away. Many will also use this immediate confirmation to apply for matching gifts so having our tax ID number on the confirmation helps.

But, we also send out an email receipt from NXT to everyone a day or so later with the pdf link included. In addition, we will mail out a printed acknowledgement letter with a receipt to donor over a certain amount. These are hand signed and usually include a handwritten message and typically take a lot longer to get out the door. We probably overkill the thank you and receipt stuff but our hope is that the donor will keep at least one for their records. Some are looking to print or save that immediate confirmation while others will wait for the “official” receipt. We figure it can't hurt to sent information multiple times in different ways with different messaging.

Margaret Carr

@Kylea Johnson and @Carrie Aranda
Thank you both for these thoughtful responses. We are currently looking at our acknowledgement process (aren't we always ) and how we can improve while still being genuine in our gratitude to donors.

JoAnn Strommen

@Carrie Aranda While we can never ‘over thank’ our donors, I was taught to use caution in multiple receipts for the same gift.

Providing multiple documents with charitable contribution statement may confuse some donors and cause them to accidentally report same gift more than once. Our process is one document that serves as official receipt. It may be in email link for online gifts or hard-copy for checks received, but not both. Other correspondence is strictly a thank you.

May not be an issue for most orgs, but we do have donors who make multiple gifts of same amount to different funds and sometimes on the same day. Using a gift ID in footer can help but we just find it cleaner to only issue one ‘receipt’ with other options for thank yous.

Just one person's thoughts. ?

Faith Murray

@Margaret Carr, our automated email from OLX contains the gift details, but it doesn't include the necessary tax language. That is included in a more official acknowledgement later. I second JoAnn's concern about donors over-claiming gifts because of multiple acknowledgements. The solution to that is to leave out the gift amount in whichever communication is NOT the tax receipt – or else to add an obvious line stating, “This is an automated acknowledgement and does not constitute and official tax receipt.”