Giving Statement Nightmare

Valerie Van Selous · January 27

The Giving Statement feature in NXT can be a complete nightmare. I don't know if anyone has used this feature but I advise to use the database capability. It is very easy to accidentally send e-mail giving statements in a second. There is no prompt confirming that you want to email a statement (or a batch of statements) and there is no way to preview what you are sending. Off they silently go. Very little is done in fundraising with out having a second set of eyes on it, especially Giving Statements - these must be checked for accuracy before sending. EVERYONE should be warned. I am actually a bit afraid to use RE NXT after this experience.

Karen Diener · January 28

I do agree with this, and have never used them or advised a customer to use them. We have always queried and exported data so that it can be carefully reviewed.

Query and Export will be available in webview, so I am not worried about losing the ability to do that.

LetterBox from RedArc can also generate these, but I do not know details about how much review is required for those.

Valerie Van Selous · January 28

Thanks Karen. I usually generate these Giving Statements through the Report section in the database view and only for our monthly and payroll givers. It works quite well and there is no possibility to send emails to anyone via the database view. In retrospect, I wish that I had not tried to use the new feature in NXT. I hope that this major bug is corrected, users should always have a chance to preview their work, but I will add one thing that I noticed. If we do send out an official Giving Statement, via this silent email procedure that I complained about in my original post, there is a new tile in a donors record that will record that the donor was sent a Giving Statement. That is useful. However, there are no corresponding email stats, so there is no way to know if the donor received it and no way to include a note with the statement. Therefore, though the Giving Statement has a cleaner, updated look through NXT at this point, due to the bugs, I would say that the feature is useless (and dangerous) and if I had to send statements to a large group of people, I would follow your advise. 😊

Faith Murray · January 28

I'll admit, it's easy to get the wrong one: I accidentally emailed my mother-in-law a giving statement just yesterday, lol. Maybe you can add an Idea Bank suggestion for Blackbaud to add a confirmation pop-up: "Are you sure you want to email these 10,000 statements? Yes, No"

A couple of thoughts on Giving Statements:

First, generated PDFs can be edited if you can be careful not to click the email button instead. So if editing is the only concern, this automated function could still be a time-saver so long as your org has PDF editing software, like Adobe.
Funds are a big issue, because they are seen by the donor, and the donor does not always understand an org's Fund structure. For example, if we send out a Seminary College Appeal that is unrestricted, we may internally designate it, for budgeting purposes, to a weird-sounding Fund like CampFacilities. The donor will not know why their gift says it went to CampFacilities, or what that even means. Likewise, a newly acquired donor will not want to see a "Donor Acquisition" fund on his/her statement. So, you must clean up your Fund Descriptions to make them donor-centric, rather than internal-facing. This links into the current conversations about donor portals and why it is important to be able to search and post funds by Fund ID instead of only Fund Description, because what will need to happen is that the Description is donor-faced, while the Fund ID is internal-faced.
There's a huge benefit to sending annual giving statements by mail, and that's the opportunity to showcase the impact of the donor's gift. As fundraisers, we're always saying gifts are not transactional, they are relational - yet a Giving Statement without an impact statement is so very transactional. Ideally, BB would allow us to add a panel at the top or bottom of generated giving statements, with custom content like a note from the CEO, or an impact infographic. Until that is available, many orgs may with to continue mailing their statements so they can customize this crucial touchpoint themselves.

Valerie Van Selous · January 28

Thanks Faith! I completely love all your ideas and agree!

Before the "snafu" I was editing the PDF and thought that the NXT statement looked more professional than the database view.

However, I will take your suggestion and find the bank and send it - there are benefits to using the new feature if it wasn't so easy to click email when you want to generate a PDF and using the database view will not always be an option. 😊

Evan Webb · February 7

I created my own Giving Statement email function in Power Automate utilizing the PDF giving statements that RE NXT generates. This allows me to send Giving Statements in mass with a branded email, and it shows up in my "sent" folder in my email.

I presented this idea at BBDevDays last year. You're welcome to check out the presentation and email me if you need the template to get started. I wouldn't say this is a beginner's project given. Sometime this year, I aim to fix some issues I've noticed after using this a couple years in a row.

Branded Giving Statement Email Demo:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uUoOfOO3ZcwQirVG8hI3EPYVBDc3xMgy/view?usp=sharing

Branded Email Creation in Power Automate:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14fZJAY5fVtDslSORBAiG33y8T0DohJ8F/view?usp=sharing

Giving Statement Nightmare

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