Tribute Acknowledgement Process

Dariel Dixon · August 2023

Good afternoon community,

I'm in the process of trying to think about my organization's tribute process. It's convoluted to say the least. Regardless, I'm trying to determine a good way to really reimagine the process of acknowledging these tribute gifts in a way that makes sense.

I'm not a fan of creating a record all the time for the purpose of acknowledging tribute gifts all the time. Especially if we don't have a tribute acknowledgement person listed. And it's a random, one-off type of gift that we won't get any more gifts for. I'm struggling to find a method of not using tribute records all the time and using something like the reference field in the gift, but in a way that allows our donor relations folks to easily pull reports for those gifts.

If anyone has any ideas or has a process that they would be willing to share, I would greatly appreciate it.

Elizabeth Johnson · August 2023

@Dariel Dixon Clarifying question for you. Are you pondering records created for the actual donors or the person being alerted that there was a tribute in their honor or in memory of a loved one?

Tatyana Leifman · August 2023

@Dariel Dixon I use gift attributes for cases where the donor made a gift in honor or memory of someone and did not provide an address where to send a card. (one attribute is “Tribute type=in honor of/in memory" and the other is “Tribute name” where the actual name goes). I feel attributes are easier to query on and export (including for a letter/mail merge, if necessary).

Karen Diener · August 2023

@Dariel Dixon

For that situation, I have organizations set up a “Tribute Anonymous” or “Generic Tribute” constituent record. Whenever the tributes come in for “Aunt Betty” or “all of the kids saved by your organization", the tribute itself is set up on that record. As long as “Aunt Betty" or “all of the kids saved by your organization” is in the description, it seems to work pretty well.

Karen

Dariel Dixon · August 2023

@Elizabeth Johnson: Primarily records to hold the tributes. I'm not particularly concerned with the acknowledgement person having a record. The donors will always get a record, but sometimes we get the craziest tributes. I think it's wonderful that you made your gift in memory of your Uncle Bubba, but I really have no idea who that is. Similarly, I think it's awesome that you were inspired to make a donation in honor of Oprah Winfrey, but we aren't going to be sending her a letter to notify her of your gift.

@Dariel Dixon Clarifying question for you. Are you pondering records created for the actual donors or the person being alerted that there was a tribute in their honor or in memory of a loved one?

Elizabeth Johnson · August 2023

@Dariel Dixon Thanks for the clarification and wow you have some fun donors. I like the way @Karen Diener handles it. Here is a close alternative as I'm a fan of options although I like Karen's idea better. Put the tribute on the donor's record that is giving a gift since you are creating a record for them - you can change the description to say what they want the tribute to be as Karen does for her Tribute Anonymous record. Then it is always tied to that person - as you said it is a one-off.

As with any advice you would give - (so this is for others that stumble on this) - pick the method that is best for your organization and be consistent. ?

I'll be curious to hear what you decide on.

Dana Burton · August 2023

@Karen Diener, this is brilliant. I've been adding ours as donation comments for a paper trail. I see a change in my future! Thank you for sharing!! ??

Potique Johnson · August 2023

@Dariel Dixon
Dariel, We have created a donor profile called Friends & Family. Anytime we have a memorial that is sent in where we know we won't receive additional donations in their memory we use the Friends & Family donor record to generate the “Acknowledgee” letter and we just put in the Reference line the name of the deceased person or who it's in memory of/and the name of the donor and if we know the “acknowledgee” we put that in the reference notes too.

This negates us having to do a “record” for every seperate memorial. We usually cut and paste from the reference note onto a notepad, so that when we are doing the acknowledgment letter we can insert the address and information about the memorial. This also helps with anonymous cash donations as well as cash donations collected during a funeral service.

Tiki

Dariel Dixon · August 2023

I want to ask a question about that process @Potique Johnson. In this case, are you creating a tribute on the Friends & Family record. I am thinking of how this would work with some of our Online Express gifts that come in with creative tributes. Being that the system makes you add a tribute to these, do you have a large number of tributes on that record, or are you just adding the same tribute every time. I want to make sure that it would not confuse any of the donor relations folks when they run the tribute acknowledgement reports.

@Dariel Dixon
Dariel, We have created a donor profile called Friends & Family. Anytime we have a memorial that is sent in where we know we won't receive additional donations in their memory we use the Friends & Family donor record to generate the “Acknowledgee” letter and we just put in the Reference line the name of the deceased person or who it's in memory of/and the name of the donor and if we know the “acknowledgee” we put that in the reference notes too.
This negates us having to do a “record” for every seperate memorial. We usually cut and paste from the reference note onto a notepad, so that when we are doing the acknowledgment letter we can insert the address and information about the memorial. This also helps with anonymous cash donations as well as cash donations collected during a funeral service.
Tiki

Tribute Acknowledgement Process

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