Acknowledgement Letters through NXT

Bernard Nemis

Hello, Everyone.

Currently we are using the old fashioned way of sending Acknowledgement letters through RE Database view (Mail > export the list > merge in Word > print > mail out.

We are trying to explore on sending these out via email and also trying to automate the whole, if not, some of the process.

I tried venturing through Marketing > Email. It looked promising because I could customize the look of the email based on company branding and I could send it to a group of donors on a specific time (through the Workflow Designer).

The roadblock I experienced was the gift information (ie. date, amount, fund) was not available in the Merge feature.

Is there something I am missing here, or is it really not available in the Email Designer? Is Email really intended for Marketing (ie. Newsletter) and not for gift acknowledgement/receipt?
Is AI Acknowledgments a good alternative? I am not sure if it has the ability to send to a group and to a specific time.

Thank you, everyone for your help!

Austen Brown

@Bernard Nemis - There are a few ways you can set up Acknowledgements in WV from AI Acknowledgements (under Fundraising), a third party app, or Power Automate. I'm partial to PA because you can automate your entire process start to finish. You can build automations yourself within PA or hire a Blackbaud Partner like AutomateGenius to do it for you - check out this link for more info:

https://automategenius.com/automations/send-faster-gift-acknowledgements/

Bernard Nemis

@Austen Brown
Hello, Austen. Thank you for the quick response. Would you happen to know if AI Acknowledgments has the ability to send to a group of folks on a given specified time?

I would love to use PA! I've encountered a problem that involved counting total constituent gifts and the Dashboard (too long of a story) that Alex Wong responded to by recommending PA and Power BI. I did some research on it, and went to a lot of sessions in Seattle that pertains to it (including that last one from PSG - awesome btw). We are limited by the fact that we are a google shop, and we use Mac. Hopefully I could find a way to integrate in the near future.

Thanks again!

Alex Wong

@Bernard Nemis
while i am not sure what google capability is with creating a receipt doc, turning into pdf, and then attaching it to an email, you can always make the email body as the receipt itself, no attachment, and the email printed out is the receipt, though NOT best branding-wise, but “can” get the job done.

if you are going to use PA, you will need a PA license anyway, so might want to consider getting ONE license of office 365 that can come with OneDrive. Non-profit price exists for MS, so i can't imagine it costing too much, but the return of investment will be very high

Bernard Nemis

@Alex Wong
Thanks, Alex. Without using Parallels or virtual desktop, is PA available in MAC? My understanding is I could only use MS PA in Windows.

Alex Wong

@Bernard Nemis
Power Automate is a cloud based service, what OS doesn't matter, use browser

Bernard Nemis

@Alex Wong
Sweet! Thank you, Alex. Hearing that helps me move forward. I kind of stalled on my effort to add this to my tool shed when I heard it's not applicable to Mac users. I have to do more work and research on this. Thanks again for introducing me to this.

Austen Brown

@Bernard Nemis - @Dan Snyder has created an acknowledgement process while at a Google shop utilizing Power Automate. He's a good resource for this type of build.

As for AI Acknowledgements - disclaimer: I tested this feature when it was first released, things may have changed in the last few months. I believe you'll need to process gifts one at a time, the system will generate copy through AI based on profiles that you set up in advance. It will only be able to generate acknowledgements to donors that have a valid email on their record. For me, it's not a complete solution and therefore I prefer Power Automate.

Bernard Nemis

@Austen Brown
Thank you, Austen. I'll check in with Dan. You guys have been a tremendous source of knowledge and support! Thanks again!!!

Arthur Gerstein

@Alex Wong putting receipt info in the body of an email with no attachment is a security risk. In Canada, for example, their CRA (Canadian Revenue Agency) does not allow emailing sensitive tax information like receipts except unless in an attached PDF. You can also up the security by sending the PDF as an encrypted PDF.

Caitlin James

@Bernard Nemis
My organization has found the Red Arc Letterbox product available on Marketplace to be a good solution for our acknowledgment letters - may be worth checking out!

Bernard Nemis

@Caitlin James
Thank you, Caitlin! ")