Donation “Acknowledged To” Field

Gifts made in honor of, or in memorial of, someone are often brought about because the honoree is already a supporter of your organization. In addition to tracking the actual text of the honorarium (IE In Honor of Bob Adams), you can now connect the gift to the profile of the honoree using the Donation Acknowledged To field.

Enabling the “Acknowledged To” Feature

This feature is turned off by default, as many organizations may not have a high enough volume of memorial/honorarium gifts to warrant using it. To turn on the feature, use the Customize View button in the upper left of the Donor View or Donation Add/Edit/View pages.

Linking a Gift on Donation Entry

Once the feature is enabled, you will find the relevant fields right above the Payment Information on the Donation Add/Edit page.

Viewing and Running Reports on “Acknowledged To” Gifts

Once a donation is linked to the donor in question, it will show up in a new section on the profile of the donor who you’re acknowledging the gift to. On the Donations tab, you’ll find a new button labeled “Donations Acknowledged to This Donor“.

After you’ve entered the gifts, you may wish to run a report to get a list of all of the gifts received that are meant to be acknowledged to this donor. This is most useful when you want to send a thank you letter to the donor, letting them know the sum total of all gifts received in honor of them/their relative, along with the names of the individuals who contributed.

When running a donation or payment report, then, you can make use of the filter called ” Donation Acknowledged To Donor ID“, found by using the Change Filters button. This filter will allow you to search for the donor ID (or type it in if you know it) and get a list of all the gifts that are to be acknowledged to that donor.

You can also use the Change Columns button to add in columns that provide you with the name and address fields of the donor who the donation is being acknowledged to.

Correspondence for Acknowledged To Gifts

Most organizations, if they have sufficient volume of these types of gifts, will create two separate templates for memorial gifts: one for the giver, and one for the honoree. Further, you may have different types of memorial gift letters. For instance, you may have one set of templates that are worded more appropriately for gifts given in memory of someone who has passed away, and maintain another set for any other kind of general honorarium.

For the giver, the template should confirm that the funds were received for the honorarium/memorial that the donor designated, and state that an acknowledgement will also be sent to the honoree.

For the honoree, the template will usually give a grand total of the amount received, and provide a list of the donors. (You would not necessarily list the amounts of each individual donor, but that is up to your organization’s discretion.) Since the Donor Wrangler letter template system would not be able to calculate these types of totals and a list of names on the fly, you would need to have a general template that you would fill in these blanks by customizing the letter on the individual’s profile.

For example: You may receive 10 gifts in memory of someone related to James Smith. On his profile, you’d go to the letters tab and click  (1) Create Letter, and then (2) Edit it.

On this screen, you can fill in necessary fields, such as the name of the person who passed away, the number of gifts received, and the total. You could also then copy/paste a list of names, obtained from a report as outlined above.

With that, the letter is complete. If you generated thank you letters to each individual donor as their memorial gifts arrived, this final acknowledgement to the bereaved would complete the correspondence relating to this series of gifts.