[SLewis]

I m trying to set up a mail merge for our honor/memorial gifts. My org has not used maiil in the past and after hearing about how great it is at the conference I am trying to set up a mail merge for honor/mem gifts and struggling!!!!
Any tips would be great
I am starting by doing the Hon/Mem Ack letter - choosig GL Post date this week and not ack the gifts after they have been merged but it is not pulling up any gifts that I want - some random ones.
After I finally get this I plan on working on the donor ack letter - do you use this or quick letters???
Any help would be appreciated- I have also tired to get the info Guide but either I am having a blond moment or the help I want is not in there.
Ashley

[nisaac]

We do our acknowledgements as a conditional merge. We put the letter code Appeal, Fund or Postcard in the gift record. We have three types of conditional merges:
- by appeal: pulls by appeal id in gift and uses the appropriate letter
- by fund: pulls by fund id in gift and uses the appropriate letter
- postcard: for gifts <=$50

All of our acknowledgement letters have "if then" tribute info. For example, if the gift has a tribute, then inlcude tribute description and other tribute fields.

Also, remember, that when you use the mail merge for acknowledgements, if the gift is marked acknowledged it will not be pulled in the merge.

Some questions you might ask yourself:
- how many different acknowledgement letters do you have
- how are they related to the gift
- what information changes in a letter and why

This can be confusing - play around a little with it and you will start to get a feel for it.

[Melissa Siobhan]

Hi conference roomie,

Hon/Mem letters are a bit more confusing as the Not Acknowledged piece is harder to find. The not acknowledged and who to acknowledge is located on the Tribute tab of the gift - not on the Gift 1 Tab.

Go into the gift you were expecting to send a letter to and look at the acknowledged field there and also look at who is set up as an acknowledgee (the tribute recipient or a family member of the memorial recipient). If no acknowledgees are listed then I do not know how Mail handles the letter but likely no letter will come out.

Good luck.

[nisaac]

I misunderstood you, Ashley. I thought you were sending out thank yous (acknowledgement letters) to donors for tribute related gifts. We do our tribute acknowledgements (for those that have acknowledgees) as a tribute list once a week. We have a custom letter that we use for these acknowledgements. We need different words for this, I think.

I've probably thoroughly confused you now. Sorry - ask any further questions you have and I'm sure you'll get some other answers.

[Harriet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melissa Siobhan

Hi conference roomie,

Hon/Mem letters are a bit more confusing as the Not Acknowledged piece is harder to find. The not acknowledged and who to acknowledge is located on the Tribute tab of the gift - not on the Gift 1 Tab.

Go into the gift you were expecting to send a letter to and look at the acknowledged field there and also look at who is set up as an acknowledgee (the tribute recipient or a family member of the memorial recipient). If no acknowledgees are listed then I do not know how Mail handles the letter but likely no letter will come out.

Good luck.

Melisssa is correct in that no letter will appear if there is no Acknowledgee listed.

We run our H/M letters from a Query that asks for the ID of the person with the Tribute info.

I have some written instructions on how we set up tributes and then send H/M letters. Let me know if you want a copy.

[Melissa Siobhan]

I do not even bother with a query. I want it to run all tributes in the system currently marrked not acknowledged so I run it on all records in the time frame since I last did acknowledgements (weekly). I fear with a query I will miss acknowledging some.

[SLewis]

Harriet - do you go through mail to do that after the query is made? and yes i would love to see your instructions.

[Harriet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by A McP

Harriet - do you go through mail to do that after the query is made? and yes i would love to see your instructions.

Yes, we use the Mail - Honor/Memorial Acknowledgement Letters. All the query does is run an "ask" for the constituent ID (of the person with the Tribute record) - saves the user from having to remember to change the select criteria. I also seem to remember that these letters somehow worked better when used with a query, but at this moment I can't remember why.

We run them for one person at a time because we often add ad hoc notes to the letters - especially the Pet IM's that usally come down from Net Community with comments that the donor wants added to the letter (ie "We will miss Fluffy scrounging around the neighborhood, looking for treats.") I don't add these as a merge field because they are often entered with very poor spelling and/or grammar and we sometimes have to paraphrase the comments.