Create a Donor Management Thank You Letter Mailing

Step 1. Once you have created a letter template and you want to send the letter, you will go to your Donor Management Mailings area and click on "Create Mailing."

Step 2. Select the type of mailing. 

When sending receipts for donations or transactions, you can choose between letter mailing and email mailing, depending on your organization’s needs. 

Letter mailing sends a physical receipt via postal service, providing a tangible and formal record for the recipient. This method is often preferred for larger donations or when a printed acknowledgment is required, though delivery may take several days and incurs printing and postage costs. 
 

Email mailing, on the other hand, delivers a digital receipt directly to the recipient’s inbox, allowing for instant delivery at minimal cost. It is convenient, eco-friendly, and easy for recipients to save or forward. Choosing the right receipting method involves considering speed, donor preference, formality, and cost to ensure acknowledgments are timely and effective. 

In this scenario, we are going to send physical letters to our constituents, so we will select "Letter".

In this example, we are sending Thank You letters, which have all been added to the Thank You Letter mailing list. 

Step 3. So, next we will select "Mailing List" and "Receipts." The mailing list that we had added the donations to was called "Donation Receipts", we would like to combine all past giving onto one receipt, so we select "send only once to constituents (even if they have multiple gifts)." And we are looking to send all unsent receipts.

Step 4. Click "Next" and uncheck any recipients you don’t wish to send receipt to. 

Note: You can uncheck all by clicking on the checkbox to the left of the Recipient Name heading.

You can also click on the "Uncheck Recipients" dropdown to uncheck any or all recipients that fall into these categories: status Not "Active", status deceased, status inactive, recipients with critical notes, recipients who have email.

Any constituents who have opted out of receiving mail or who do not have an address in their profile will be grayed out in the list.

If you wish to remove recipients from the mailing list after mailing click on the checkbox below the list of recipients on the left-hand side of the screen.

Step 5. Click "Next" again to continue. 

Step 6. Click on the "Select letter template" dropdown and select the template you wish to use (ex. Gift Thank You Letter), as well as a header and footer if you choose to add those elements. Selecting the template(s) will generate the content from the template into the Message below.

If you wish to do so, add in the Payment Table. To do this, click in the body of the letter where you wish to place the Payment Table, and click on "Insert Payment Table" on the tool bar.

Enter the Start Date and End Date for the payments you wish to include in the table, and add/remove the columns you wish to include in the table. Then click "OK".

Note: It is suggested that you click on "View Draft" and download the letter before you process the letters. If any updates need to be done after viewing the draft, you can go back to the template and make those changes, or, if the changes only need to be made for this mailing, and not saved to the template, you can make the changes directly to this message.

Step 7. Click "Process Letters" to process the mailing. This will lead you back to the main Mailings page, where you can see that the mailing is processing.

You'll be taken to the main Mailing screen where the Mailing History will show the processing status.

Step 8. Once the status shows "Letter Sent" you'll want to click on the letter you just processed, and the name of the letter will show on the right-hand side of the screen. You'll see the name and address for each recipient. Click on the "Download Letter(s)" button.

Step 9. Select the format you wish to download the file as (Microsoft Word or PDF), and click on the "Download Letter(s)" button.

After downloading the letter(s) you can either save them to your computer to print at your leisure or print them out now.

Step 10. Once the mailing has been processed, a note will appear in the Activity tab of each constituent's profile to acknowledge that the receipt was generated. 

Step 11. Clicking on the note will open a window that will show you information about the mailing. From here you can access the mailing list and download a copy of the tax receipt letter.