Donor emails and report samples

Caroline Hartley
Caroline Hartley
Third Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified
in Blackbaud Award Management™ & Blackbaud Stewardship Management™ Discussions

Hello all!

We are not currently using the Stewardship Management system to email reports to donors, but I'm interested in doing so. If you are using the system to communicate with donors, I'd love to know how it's working for you, what donor feedback has been, and any tips/advice you might have re: formatting and ensuring system-generated emails aren't caught in spam folders.

Thank you!

Caroline

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Comments

  • Mary Trautman
    Mary Trautman Blackbaud Employee
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    Hi @Caroline Hartley,

    I know you are hoping to hear from another Stewardship Management client, and I encourage those of you using it to respond here!

    But I did want to include some information about Email Deliverability for you. You can forward this on to your IT Team and they can make sure the settings are configured.

    Email Deliverability.pdf

    -Mary

  • Michele GuyorBorthwick
    Michele GuyorBorthwick
    Fourth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Caroline Hartley

    Hi Caroline,

    We have only sent one or two mass emails to all of the donors/contacts in Stewardship Management. Recently, one was to send a “Save the Date” announcement for an upcoming donor/recipient event that did ask for feedback. With the limited responses we received, I am questioning if the emails all got through and will be speaking to our IT department about the info in the PDF Mary included in her post.

    When we added Stewardship Management a few years ago we decided to let our scholarship donors/contacts decide if they wanted to use the scholarship portal instead of, or in addition to, receiving paper “snail mail” communications. With each annual report, I have included an informational letter and a sheet they can fill out and send back (or email me) if they would like access to the portal, and I send one to new scholarship contacts with their welcome package as they are added to the system. Not sure if it is an older average donor/contact age and lower comfort with technology related result, but the majority of our donors have either not responded, so therefore are still receiving mailed communications, or prefer a “combo” set up where they get their annual report in the mail, but have access to the portal. I believe that over time we will have more and more donors taking advantage of the portal access so I continue to add information to profiles, like bios and photos.

    The donors who have accessed the portal have had positive experiences, and we have received many positive remarks on the annual reports that we are now producing and mailing using Stewardship Management. The report format still needs to be more flexible - there are many formatting limits - but I expect this to change and improve moving forward.

    Not sure if my response has been much help :)

  • Caroline Hartley
    Caroline Hartley
    Third Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified

    @Michele GuyorBorthwick thank you for your reply! This is incredibly helpful. We haven't set up the donor portal yet, but I'm glad to hear that your donors who have opted to use are liking it. Thanks again!

    Caroline

  • Caroline Hartley
    Caroline Hartley
    Third Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified

    @Mary Trautman thank you - this is very helpful!

  • Nancy Murray
    Nancy Murray
    Sixth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Caroline Hartley
    Hi Caroline,

    We implemented Stewardship Mangement about 4 years ago. It has been successful in helping to send out multiple reports and it does give you a dashboard that allows you to see who still needs reports. It does it give you the ability to collect the student information in the post acceptance side of Awards Mangement. The downside for me has been, no ability to personalize the template that is generated when you pull a donor report. I am not fan of the pdf report it generates. Also, there is no way to monitor if the donor is opening the e-mail generated reports. Hope this helps!

    Nancy Murray

    Eastern Illinois University

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