Acknowledgment Tab (Unposted Gifts)

Acknowledgment Tab (Unposted Gifts)

The Acknowledgment tab contains information about the Donor that you can use to create acknowledgment letters. You can also use this tab to add information about memorial or honorary Gifts.

Acknowledgment Tab

Acknowledgment Tab: Acknowledge To Fields

When a Donor is selected for a new Gift record, the Donor’s name, title, address, and salutation are automatically copied from the Profile record. Refer to the Profile 1 Tab and Profile 2 Tab for more information on the fields in this section.

If the Donor has Alternate Addresses, FIMS will check the current date against the Alternate Address date range to determine the appropriate address to use. You can change this default address by clicking the arrow in the Name drop-down box and selecting a different address from the list.

You can manually change any aspect of the acknowledgment name or address. This is an exception to the rule that you cannot address a letter to a Donor’s Partner alone.

Note: This name and address is used for the Gift Acknowledgment Export and will be part of the Gift History record. Any changes you make to the name, address and salutations only affect this Gift record -- no changes will be made to the information in the Profile record. Refer to Running the Gift Acknowledgment Export for more information.

Tip: Click the arrow in the Salutation drop-down box if you want to select a different salutation line for export. The Name field will automatically change based on the Salutation that you select, but you can manually enter a different name, if necessary.

Note: To create a manual Gift Acknowledgment for this single Gift (as opposed to exporting and merging), click the Copy Address to Clipboard button (looks like a clipboard) next to the Address 2 field to copy the name, address, and salutation to the Windows clipboard. You can then paste the text into a Word document to create a single letter.

Acknowledgment Tab: Memorial/Honorarium Fields

The Memorial/Honorarium fields identify the person for whom a Memorial or Honorary Gift is a tribute and link the Gift to the memorialized or honored person’s Profile ID code for listing donations by the memorial name.

Note: You must enter a Profile ID code for the memorialized or honored person. In the case of a Memorial, you can create a simple Profile record with only a name, a report name, and a sort field. If you do not want to create a Profile for the person being memorialized, simply make up a short code for the ID Code field (for example, doe1 for John Doe), and then enter the full name of the person in the Name field. Each time another Gift is received for this person, use the same code. You can also select this code to run a report showing all Gifts in memory of the person.

Tip: The Gift Acknowledgment export gift.txt file contains these fields. Column R - SpecialCode includes whether this gift is N-Normal, H-In Honor, or M-Memorial. Column O – SpecialName contains text from the Name field

Acknowledgment Tab: CC Fields

FIMS gives you the option to create a second acknowledgment letter (CC) for an additional person to whom you want to send notification of a Gift (in addition to the Donor). For example, you might want to send an acknowledgment to the honored individual, a representative of the memorialized individual, or a Fund Representative for the recipient Fund.

The Gift Acknowledgments Export has an option to export a second Gift data file with the names and addresses of the CC Profiles, in addition to all of the standard Gift acknowledgment fields. Refer to Running the Gift Acknowledgments Export for more information.

Tip: If you occasionally use the CC field to notify a Fund Representative that a Gift was received by their Fund, you may find it convenient to set up a Fund Association code called funrep (only that spelling of the code will work). You can then create a Fund Association using that code for the person to notify. Once that is done, clicking the arrow in the CC drop-down box will reveal the person’s name.

Acknowledgment Tab: Comment Field

Use the acknowledgment Comment to add a sentence or paragraph (up to eight pages of text) that can be exported to word processing to personalize the acknowledgment letter.