It sounds like many of you ask for donor preferences on their recognition listings at the time they make their gift.  Is that correct?  If so, I am wondering if all of your donors take the time to fill in this field before sending in their gift.  We have a very long and confusing process to pull our Donor Roll and I think that it would be great to ask them in advance except my concern would be that they would not fill in the field.

You are right, not everyone fills out the line asking for their recognition name.  That is why we have a default style, for those who have not given a preference.  As you can see by the earlier posts, many use the Primary Addressee field.  We use a Recognition Addressee.  We allow anyone to make any change to how they want their name, short of @#$#@#@!,  and only use the default for those who have not shown a preference or not filled out the line. I have pulled recognition lists for many different organization and found, for the most part, those people who want a very specific listing know to make the Development Office aware of their listing.

What do you use for Foundations and organisations, since they do not have salutations? 

Jennifer Barker:

It sounds like many of you ask for donor preferences on their recognition listings at the time they make their gift.  Is that correct?  If so, I am wondering if all of your donors take the time to fill in this field before sending in their gift.  We have a very long and confusing process to pull our Donor Roll and I think that it would be great to ask them in advance except my concern would be that they would not fill in the field.

Yes many of my donors take the time to write in how they wish to be listed.  We have on our reply card the donor address block and right above it it says: Please correct and indicate any changes to your name and address below.  This way we know how to list the donor.  You could also add in there something about 'this is how your name will be listed in donor recognition reports'  

Our process is similar to what Nina Williams wrote in her post (we use a "gift recognition" salutation and use primary addressee if it doesn't exist).  The difference for us is that none of our solicitation pieces ask the donor how  he or she wants to be listed.  We changed our Report on Giving to cumulative giving several years ago, but I found that donors will tell you one thing with one gift then something entirely different the next even within the same donor year.  So our thank you letters all contain a paragraph letting the donor know how they will be listed and how to contact me should they wish to make a change.   This process, along with the switch to cumulative giving, has made my life much simpler.  Hope this helps.