Best practice for tracking which acknowledgement letters a donor has already received

Jennie Christensen

How do you track which acknowledgement letters a donor has already received? Our organization only uses printed hand-signed acknowledgement letters that are sent by postal mail. We are new to RE NXT and need a way to look up and review the acknowledgment letters a donor has already been sent.

Carlene Johnson

If you have not yet checked it out, I highly recommend Letterbox by RedArc. This tool can add each mailed (or emailed) acknowledgement letter as an action on the constituent's record.

Alternatively, you could use Letter Codes which are currently managed in database view.

Jennie Christensen

Jennie Christensen

Anything I should be aware using RedArc if we don't send email receipts and only mail acknowledgement letters?

Carlene Johnson

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/309849#Comment_309849

Nope - it is designed to work for snail mail letters as well!

Karen Diener

Out of curiosity, how would you use this information? Would it change the letter that you select for any gift?

I've always created letters that relate back to the solicitation that prompted the gift when possible. If a donor receives an appeal letter that contains a client story or asks for donations to a specific program, the letter should thank them for their gift to that program. If it is unsolicited, the letter can be more general.

I'm just not sure if the letter code will be enough, or if you are hoping to see the actual content of the letter.

Rona Lavery

Hello friends, I am fairly new. Would running a query or creating a constituent list also help with seeing what acknowledgement letters a donor has received?

Lena Payne

We add any acknowledgment letters to Actions - eg Category - Mailing, Action type - Donation related, Status - sent, and copy and paste the letter to notes.

Aldera Chisholm

I'll second Carlene on LetterBox. Hands down, the easiest way to both create, and track letters. I love that it automatically can create an action, and attach a letter to a record - even with the free version!