Updated June 27, 2017
Acknowledgement Procedures
Categories and criteria for Acknowledgement
No Acknowledgement is generated if any of the following apply:
- Online gifts under $1,000 not by Clergy/Religious/Acknowledgement Priority Households (receive only email receipt/thank you)
- Gift is marked as Do Not Acknowledge (usually at request of donor or special situation)
- Solicit Code one of: Annual Acknowledgment Only, No Communication of Any Kind, Do Not Acknowledge, Do Not Mail
- No valid address is present (test is presence of Zip Code)
Individual Donors
Auto Signed Letters:
Criteria: Gifts are under $1,000 AND Donor is not Clergy, Religious AND has no Acknowledgement Priority value at the Household level Report: AutoAcknowledgment – https://na31.salesforce.com/00O3700000253zp
Hand Signed Letters:
Criteria: Gift is between $1,000-$4,999 OR Donor is Clergy, Religious OR Acknowledgment Priority value of ‘Hand Signed Always’ at Household level Report: Hand Signature – https://na31.salesforce.com/00O370000025483
Special Acknowledgment:
Criteria: Gift is over $5,000 OR Acknowledgment Priority value is ‘Special Ack Always’ at Household level. Report: Major Gifts Acknowledgments https://na31.salesforce.com/00O3700000254Lv
Organization Donors
Auto Org Acknowledgment
Criteria: Gift is under $1,000 AND not from a Record Type = Parish, Archdiocese AND not Acknowledgement Priority = ‘Hand Sign Always’, ‘Special Ack Always’
Report:
Hand Signed Org Acknowledgment:
Criteria: Gift is $1,000-$4,999 AND Acknowledgment Priority not equal to ‘Special Ack Always’ at Org level.
Special Org Acknowledgment:
Criteria: Gift is over $5,000 OR Acknowledgment Priority equals ‘Special Ack Always’ at Org level.
Soft Credit Acknowledgement:
Criteria: Org Gift is soft credited to an individual donor (ex. Donor Advised Funds) and gift is marked as Acknowledge=Soft Credit Acknowledge
Customization
The customized text for each donation is handled by Letters (and custom word merge criteria) in Causeview: https://na31.salesforce.com/a0W?fcf=00B37000002FcK6
Letters
Each “Letter” has a set of customized text values that are used for either online gifts on manually batched letters.
The field “Custom Rich Text 2” is used for printed acknowledgment letters.
The Letter values are assigned per gift, but are defaulted to specific values based on the Appeal code assigned to the gift and its default Letter assignment.
- if one person is signing a letter, the use of a plural possessive pronoun, the first person plural pronoun, and so forth, will result in rejection of the letter.
- For example – We, our ministry, us should not appear in letters that only one person is signing.
Word Merge Criteria
There is a field called Chaplain? on the Contact object. It is a formula field with the following calculation:
AND( RecordTypeId = “01237000000Ehu8”, CONTAINS(TEXT(Rank_or_Title__c), “Deacon”) = FALSE)
Which first looks for record type of Clergy where their rank/Title field does not contain any variation of Deacon and then returns TRUE or FALSE. This is a stop gap measure until we implement a Clergy field that distinguishes (Priests, Deacons, and non-Catholic clergy)
This field then renders as a 1 or 0 in the reports for gift acknowledgment and the word template renders this logic:
{IF “{MERGEFIELD Chaplain? * MERGEFORMAT}” = “1” “Chaplain Text” “Standard text” * MERGEFORMAT}
The text outputs are long paragraphs with formatting and additional merge fields. The chaplain text allows us to acknowledge current and former AMS chaplains appropriately.
Data Validation
Before running a large batch of auto acknowledgements we should be checking for errors that resulted in new duplicate records. Under Individuals Tab in salesforce there is a View called “Devin’s Records” because Devin’s account is used to import the caging file all new records show up as created by him. This view will show all new records from the last three days. Records with no Rank or Title should be checked for existing records and any erroneous duplicates should be noted in the slack channel.
Data Entry Notes
When creating a new Parish record, the Parish’s diocese should be assigned as the Parent Account so that it will attribute National Collection Gifts appropriately to the diocese level.
Renewal Mailing lists
When providing list to vendors for Direct Mail renewals start with the most recent DM Renewal List report.
Date of Last Gift greater or equal to [five years prior]
Direct Mail Preference not equal to “Annual Only” (unless this is the Christmas Appeal), “No Direct Mail”)
Export to Excel
Sort for blank values in Addressee and Salutation and exclude them from mailing list (these would be records that need cleanup before being sent an appeal)
From the most recent renewal file you can copy the Giving level A,B and C columns into the new file. Ensure that the column order matches the previous version so that the formula fields are using the correct values to calculate.
Check the break points for the rounding value for all giving levels to change from –2 (hundreds place) under $500 largest gift, then to –1(tens place) under $250 and the B value changes to 0(ones place) below $30 largest gift
Online Donation Forms
Creating new donation forms to accompany mailed appeals can be done by clicking the ActionPage Designer button from within the Campaign you want it linked to. Simply follow the prompts and a few steps:
- upload a graphic image for the banner
- add the google analytics code: UA-25341546-1
- Point to the thank you page (for donation forms only) https://www.milarch.org/thank-you
- Once complete you can have Meg update a shortened URL (e.g. milarch.org/give) to point to the appropriate place.
- Note: you can adjust the giving levels and their labels using text the follows the ? In the following URL: https://actionpage.causeview.com/actionpage/90812201705052356??
Amounts=$1000:1000;$500:500;$250:250;$100:100;$50:50;%20
Label and dollar figure and note that the URL must have a ; after the last value and between each value.
URL Forwarding
AMS currently uses a few URL variations for different purposes milarch.org
/donate is the general online donation form
/give we have been using for direct mail appeals (whichever is the currently active one)
/gift is currently in use for the Army Ten Miler
The standard use of these is to connect email appeals or direct mail appeals to donation forms. We do not link directly from an email to a donation form so that once that appeal is discontinued the link can be updated to still point to a current form.
Data Cleanup Tips
- Search for “Mrs. and ” to find any reverse ordered household salutations and addressees (earliest/latest needs to be swapped to latest/earliest)
- Search for “Mr. and ” but NOT “Mr. And Mrs.” To find any women military ranked who should be listed first.