Creating Acknowledgment Letters

The CRM Acknowledgment Wizard is an easy way to acknowledge when someone donates in remembrance of a living or deceased "tribute".

To coordinate these communications...

1. Configure an Acknowledgment Letter for the tribute or family to receive.
2. Ensure the Acknowledge checkbox on the donation screen is checked.
3. The gift must have either a Dedication from Engage or Memory/Honor fields filled in.
4. Your tribute must either be a living constituent (the honoree) or a deceased constituent (memorial) with a relationship link to a Caregiver or Acknowledgment Recipient who will act as the "custodian" and receive the letter. If you are unsure how to add a Relation, click here.

Create the Acknowledgment Letter

Create a letter template to create your acknowledgments; avoid having any tables in your document since those can cause issues with formatting. Use the following variables as merge fields in your letter:

{{Smart Addressee}}—This is the custodian or honoree.

{{Smart Address}}—This is the custodian or honoree's primary address.

{{Smart Informal Salutation}}—This is the custodian or honoree's name in greeting.

{{Honor or Memorial First Name(s)}}—This is the first name of the tribute.

{{Honor or Memorial Name}}—This is the full name of the tribute.

{{Honor Donor(s)}}—This is the name of every person who donated, and—if you check those options in the Acknowledgment Wizard configuration—their gift amount and address.

{{Memorial Donor(s)}}—This is the name of every person who donated, and— if you check those options in the Acknowledgment Wizard configuration—their gift amount and address.

If you want to send an email, create a text-only formatted document to serve as the email body. The letter will be an attachment, and the text-only file will be the content of the email. 

Add the documents to Salsa CRM

Now that you have your letter(s), you will need to upload them to Salsa CRM. If you have produced these letters in Microsoft Word... 

1. Go to Manage > Documents > Word Processor.
2. If you see the Google Docs screen come up, go ahead and click the Other Word Processing Options button.
3. Choose to upload a file from your computer:
4. Choose your document and click Add to Database.
5. Set a description for your document.

If you want to email the honoree or custodian, follow the same process for your adding the email body to Salsa CRM.

If you use Google Docs to create your document, you have two options. You can either...

• Build your letter from scratch in the CRM word processor 
• If you have a letter already created in your Google account, you can import that document by clicking Open from Google Drive in the top left corner. This button will open a pop-up where you can choose your letter from Google Drive, then click Select.

Configure a CRM Acknowledgment Form Letter

Now that your documents are in the CRM, you will need to create a form letter entry to choose from the Acknowledgment Wizard. 

1. Go to Manage > Configuration > Form Letters & Receipts, and select Add Form Letter to Screen.
2. Name your letter, and choose Acknowledgment from the dropdown.
3. For a print letter...
1. Leave the Delivery Method as Mail. 
2. Next, set the appropriate documents. For a printable letter, click Select Document.
3. In the document search, change the document type to .docx.
4. Click Search. All of your letters will display below. 
5. Find your document in the list (you can search all columns if you need it) and click on that letter. This will take you back to the form letter window.
6. Click Save.
4. For an email...
1. Change the Delivery Method to Email.
2. Next, set the appropriate documents. For an email, click Choose Attachment.
3. In the document search, change the document type to .docx.
4. Click Search. All of your letters will display below. 
5. Find your document in the list (you can search all columns if you need it) and click on that letter. This will take you back to the form letter window.
6. Now click Select Email Content.
7. The default document type for this search is text, so we can leave that as is, then click Search. 
8. As before, click on your document. This will take you back to the form letter window.
9. You must enter a From Address, a Subject, and an Attachment Name.
10. Click Save.

Merge Custodians and Donors into the Form Letter

To access the Acknowledgment Wizard, go to Reports > Queries > Acknowledgment Wizard. Here, we’ll configure some options: 

1. First, choose the recipient. This can be either a custodian for the deceased, or the honoree, or both. 
2. Next, decide what to show in the letter. 
1. If there were multiple gifts in tribute to someone, choose to list the gifts separated by commas or on one line per donor. 
2. Click to show the donor’s mailing address.
3. Click to show the gift amount(s). 
4. Define your time period. You can process acknowledgments by batch, or by a period of time. 
3. Click Next to go to Step 2. 
4. You will see a list of the acknowledgments that matched your date or batch criteria. Your acknowledgment recipient will need a mailing address or an email address for the letter to generate. Click Next again to go to Step 3.
5. We will start to generate our letters or emails in this step. Click Preview/Print Letters.
6. A pop-up window directs you to choose your form letters. You may want to have two different letters, one for memorials and one for honors. 
7. You can also choose to save a copy of the letter to the constituent record.
8. Click Process. A new browser tab opens with the document(s) displayed.
1. For printable letters, click the Print All button at the top to print all of the documents generated.
2. For an email, click Send from Salsa CRM.