[BCRaven]

I would like to hear from organizations that send out Annual Statements. Do you include soft credits? Do you send them to everyone? Our gift processor believes we will open a huge can of worms if we send them, but others in the office believe there is great stewardship potential here.

Please weigh in on your pros and cons and processes.

Thanks!
Sara Kramer
Benedictine College
skramer@benedictine.edu

[paulmorriss]

We've tried a couple of different strategies over the years. We used to send to regular donors plus those giving non-regular gifts totalling more than £100. Now we send to everyone. We don't use soft credits at all.

It's useful for correcting errors and is helpful for people filling in tax returns, so that's why we bother.

It's also a useful thing to put out a message, such as, "do you want email receipts", or this year "do you want to give by direct debit?".

[LCox]

I find the statements frustrating to use, to say the least, but they tell me here they have always sent them to everyone before. I am hoping to cut that back to what Paul Morriss posted they used to do - only folks over a certain dollar amount would get one, but I'm having a hard time getting the query for that to work properly, since I'm not that well-versed in queries yet. Mostly wanting to do this because sending the sheer number of letters to do them all is quite a cost in staff time, let alone money, and doesn't seem efficient. Although - I like the idea of using it to piggyback stewardship things, that would make it worthwhile. I'll have to bring that idea to my development team and see what they think!

We don't include soft credits - that would confuse the donor and they aren't exactly deductible! We have, I am told, been including gifts-in-kind but I am not sure that's a great idea either. Would love some feedback on that one as well.

Also - does anyone know how to get labels for that report, or - better still - how to get it to print for window envelopes? I haven't found a way to do this, though making labels is easy for most other reports...
...and it will be a while before I can even begin to learn Crystal Reports and do my own, which is what I'd really like to be able to do.

[paulmorriss]

I had to get the data out and use Access to get the "total amount > 100" bit working. We use Crystal for the report too, is it is a bit complicated. I hope you can find a simpler way.

[LCox]

hmm, thanks, that at least confirms what I thought would be necessary to do it right, although I was hoping against hope for an easier answer, and I'm not sure I'm up to dealing with getting the data into Access. I'm not a DBA - yet.

[Kelly M.]

We're using the Annual Statment Report for the first time this year. WE're only mailing to donors with consolidated receipts (mainly monthly donors) so there's very little extra work besides matching them up to the receipt. They do not include soft credits or gift-in-kinds.

[andrea.bbbs]

I send a thank you letter that states at the bottom that it is a receipt for tax purposes, and only send out an Annual to people who request it. I did notice that the address block printed over to the left - perhaps if you had just the right kind of window envelope it would work.

If I had to send out to all, I would create a query to pull the records, use the query to run the report, and use the same query to dump to excel and create labels.

[mwittman]

If anyone is looking at options for doing your consolidated receipts/letters, you may want to take a look at a utility I recently built for our consolidated receipting needs. Caveat: it involves working inside and outside of RE, so it requires more technical maneuvering than just using RE alone.

More is explained in the readme file of the download (in Shared Files), but in brief: it's a little .NET Windows application that compiles the gifts for consolidated donors (based on a query export in the form of an Access .MDB database file) so you can do a simple MS Word Mail Merge that can look some like this:

==================================================================
Dear Ms Donor,

On behalf of the XYZ College, our Board of Governors, Foundation Board and Community Relations Division, please accept our sincere appreciation for your recent giving:

……… 07/25/2007 ……… $100 ……… My Fund Description
……… 08/25/2007 ……… $100 ……… My Fund Description
……… 09/25/2007 ……… $100 ……… My Fund Description
……… 10/25/2007 ……… $100 ……… My Fund Description
……… 11/25/2007 ……… $100 ……… My Fund Description
……… 12/25/2007 ……… $100 ……… My Fund Description
……… 12/31/2007 ……… $2000 ………Other Fund Description

Please find attached a taxable receipt for your gift. We are grateful for your commitment to the College in our efforts to provide quality education and training that enable our students to achieve their full potential.


Yours Sincerely,
John Doe
Associate Vice President, Community Relations
===================================================================

Instead of a separate letter plus a canned report (Annual Statement), you get one integrated receipt-letter that contains the gift details.

Compile Gifts for Consolidated Reporting Utility:
http://www.blackbus.org/forum/downlo...?do=file&id=64