CRM: Send Year End Letters

It's the end of the calendar year, your fiscal year, or both, and it is time to send year end thank you notes to all your supporters for the year. While you can send regular Thank You notes using the Send Gift Thank Yous as outlined here, we have made it easy for those year end thank yous, with the Send Year End Letters feature in Donor CRM.

Gifts > Send Year End Letters

The process is very similar to the Send Gift Thank Yous, with a few additions:

  • Go into your Donor CRM account.
  • Open the Communication category from the left navigation.
  • Click Send Year End Letters 
    Send Gift Thank You Menu
  • You will go to the Year End Thank You Letter section.


As shown in the Last Sent Type column, by default it will show all the types of contact you may have sent, including none or No Thank You. Because the Year End Thank You Letters group a donor's contributions into a single line, you will only see the last type of communication that was sent on the last donation. If they have donated at other times during the year, you will see the Total Gift Amount and Total Gifts, but not each individual gift they have sent.

The reason is that you are sending them a consolidated Year-End thank you, so you don't want to spam them with the same Year End Thank You several times, if they have donated several times throughout the year. 

Filtering your list

You can filter your list in different ways by choosing the appropriate drop-down menu at the top of the section.


Status

Status Drop Down
You can filter by status by choosing between the following:

  • All Statuses
  • Pending
  • Sent

Date Range

Your Year-End may be From January to December, or July to June or anything. Maybe you want to do a six-month Thank You. You can choose whatever date range you prefer by clicking on the To drop-down and the From drop-down.


Send as

Filter by Type


Send as allows you to select the method by which you want to send the End of Year Thank you Letter to the Donor. This includes:

  • Letter Only
  • Email Only
  • Letter & Email
  • Last Sent Type

Attach a Template

You can use the Template drop-down to use an existing Thank You Template or you can add a new one from the menu.

Select Template

Add a Template

If you click Add New + it will show you the Create template pop-up window to configure the details and write your letter template.

Create Template

You can add or edit to your template as desired and described here.

Previewing and Sending Thank Yous

.When you are ready to send, it is the same process as any other Gift Thank You message:

  • Click Preview
    • This also shows you the count of how many thank you letters you are sending.
  • Review your messages with the donors information in the letter or email.
    • If the email address or mailing address is missing, you will get a notification on the top right corner
  • Click Next Step - Choose Destination
  • If there is any missing data, the Next Step-Confirm and Send will be disabled. Add any missing Email/Mailing address using the Edit Contact button.
  • Click on Next Step-Confirm and Send
    • It will generate the letters in a PDF that you can review and print
    • You can click on the download box in the upper right to view and print the letters.
  • Click Next to go to print envelopes
    • Adjust anything you want for the envelopes from the preview
    • Click Print Envelopes for it to create a PDF file
    • You can click on the download box in the upper right to view and print the envelopes.