While your big year-end push may be over, you likely still have some important things to wrap up - such as sending acknowledgments for those final year-end donations, following up with new donors, creating year-end reports, and sending out donation summaries to your donors from last year.
Thankfully, 'Donor Management' can help you check those tasks off your list!
Step 1: Navigate to 'Direct Mail'
From your 'Donor Management' Dashboard, click the 'Communication' tab on the left navigation panel and select 'Direct Mail' from the newly expanded drop-down list.
Step 2: Click 'Add Direct Mail'
Next, click the 'Add Direct Mail' button in the upper right corner of the page.
Step 3: Build your direct mailing
Follow the step-by-step process in creating a new direct mailing - and note the following:
when asked if you want to 'Create Only One Letter Per Household?', selecting 'Yes' will list all donations made by a household when you generate your 'Last Year Donation Summary'
if you want to provide individual letters to each donor within a household, select 'No'
when selecting recipients, choose a filter that includes all your donors from the past year
you can use a 'Saved Filter' or the 'Recommended Filter' titled 'Made donation in calendar year 20XX'
Here are a few options regarding creating content for your end-of-year direct mailing:
Option 1: use our sample recommended content (including the necessary merge fields), found below
Option 2: use the pre-built template created for this type of mailing (which can be found by selecting 'Yes' when asked if you want to 'Create from Template') and select 'Last Year Donation Summary'
Option 3: use the merge field *|DONATION_SUMMARY_LAST_YEAR|* within a communication you crafted to pull in relevant information
Step 4: Preview and download your mailing
Once you have finalized a draft of your direct mailing, click to download a preview to verify your message appears as intended.
When ready, click the 'Generate Letters' or 'Generate [X] Letters & [X] Labels' button to complete this process. You will receive an e-mail confirmation once your direct mailing is complete and ready to be downloaded.
Sample Direct Mail Template
*|TODAYS_DATE|*
*|DONOR NAME|*
*|ADDRESS|* *|ADDRESS_2|*
*|CITY|*, *|STATE|* *|ZIP_CODE|*
*|FIRST_NAME|*,
As the [YOUR JOB TITLE] of [ORGANIZATION NAME], I would like to personally thank you for making our work possible. Your kindness this past year supported [X]. Your generosity [verb] us to look beyond the challenges of [X] and [verb] our full effort and heart into [OUTCOME] for [COMMUNITY/POPULATION] we serve together.
With deep gratitude,
[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR JOB TITLE]
*|DONATION_SUMMARY_LAST_YEAR|*
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