I have been asked to produce year end "receipts" for our donors.  Is a receipt the way to go?  Is there another option, like a year end statement that can be produced from Raiser's Edge?  Would be interested in learning about how some of you handle year end communication with your donors.

I have a whole system for Year End Statements. We use the Annual Statement Report under Financial Reports for the actual gift activity.

We do a personalized letter with the donor bill of rights on the back in a window envleope and include their statement, a pledge form & BRE as well as a stewardship insert that has important dates for the next year on it. this year due to the weight of the insert (full color) and using a pledge form & separate BRE it should cost .61 to mail as oposed to standard rate.

Nancy Vinje:

I have been asked to produce year end "receipts" for our donors.  Is a receipt the way to go?  Is there another option, like a year end statement that can be produced from Raiser's Edge?  Would be interested in learning about how some of you handle year end communication with your donors.

Nancy, what you do at year end would depend on what you've done during the year.  Are gifts receipted during the year?  If so, like Laurel I use the Annual Statement Report when needed (we only send as requested as all gifts are receipted and acknowledged).  If the gifts are receipted, you would not want to issue another receipt.  I don't think that would be considered a good practice.

For those who we have not receipted during the year, constituents with monthly bank drafts, monthly credit card payments and a few who have asked for only year end, we run a consolidated receipt. I also use the Annual Statement Report with this to document the payments. They receive a 'year end receipt.'

We send the annual statements to everyone, especially employees that pay bi-weekly via payroll deduction - they can no longer use their W2's (past 2 years it was a new IRS reg I think) as supporting documentation for a tax deduction. The annual statements do not include any non-cash gifts on them but the letter we include reminds them that we can reprint a lost receipt if they need it.

Hi Nancy,

I've investigated both the receipt mail task and the Annual Statement Report, but both fall somewhat short of our needs, so I'm planning to create a custom crystal report to prepare a cumulative receipt that itemizes all gifts for the year and all benefits for each gift.

HTH,

Jason

I am having issues with year end statements also.  I have tried for several years to develope an easy way to list in the statement, not only what has been donated throughout the year, but also, the original pledge amount and the pledge balance.

I have been uable to find a report or mail/export that does that...any suggestions?

June Price:

I am having issues with year end statements also.  I have tried for several years to develope an easy way to list in the statement, not only what has been donated throughout the year, but also, the original pledge amount and the pledge balance.

I have been uable to find a report or mail/export that does that...any suggestions?

Not sure if this will help or not - depends on if you've already receipted gifts through RE.  In Mail > Receipts function if you choose Receipt Type of 'create custom data file' it gives you the option to pull pledge, pledge balance, gift date, gift amount,amount received - a whole lot more choices than preprinted receipts. You could export data if you want to combine documention for each gift in to one piece.   If you've receipted through RE, it won't pull records. 

The Pledge Status Report under Pledge and Recurring Gift Reports may help if all your constits had pledges.  You can show fund, pledge amount, payment amount, balance...    Haven't used for that purpose so not sure all the options.

Happy New Year!

Our organization receipts each gift (except EFT as a cost savings measure) as payments are received.  Our receipt clearly states that the donor needs to keep the receipt for tax purposes.  However, we get requests every January for a year end receipt (even though we receipted the donor throughout the previous year).  Raiser's Edge isn't the only donor software that is problematic when it comes to year end receipts.  I don't use the Annual Statement Report because it doesn't mail in a window envelope and it doesn't provide statement that "no gifts or goods were received."  I send year end receipts to EFT donors since they do not have canceled checks.  For EFT donors, I have created a query to select their name/address and their total for the previous calendar year.  Then I merge this information into a Word document and mail the statements in window envelopes.  For individual statements, I have a long procedure to print the same document in Quick Letters.  Our year end receipt lists only the total for the previous year, not an itemized list.

Our university receipts all gifts when paid and also send out a year end donor statement to our top constituents summarizing their tax deductible gifts by date.

The RE Annual Donor statement is very useful and fairly easy to run. We have a standard one and can generate a gift summary on the fly. If you have Acrobat Professional, you can run the donor statement in RE, save it as a .pdf file somewhere on your PC.

Then open Acrobat Professional, Open the .pdf file and simply add a header/footer to reflect the "no good or services statement" to that document. We include an itemized list and indicate the designation of the gift. The only snag on this is when a donor has so many gifts in one year, it becomes a 2 page .pdf report. The footer needs to be removed on the first page.

Hope that helps.

Rachael Sauve'

Director Development Systems

Furman University

864-294-3478

How do you get the Annual Statements to format properly for window envelopes?  We had issues with that this year and were forced to print labels and use regular envelopes.

Also - Anonymous gifts from donors do not appear with donor's name on it, but rather just "Anonymous" and are printed on a separate sheet.  Is there any way for the report to indicate with a symbol (* or something) that certain gifts on someone's statement are "anonymous" - just like they do with soft credits?  My sense is that the Annual Statement Report is not really customizable.

How do you get the Annual Statements to format properly for window envelopes? Our cover letter is done via export and I use a Text Box that keeps the address lines where they need to be as part of the Merge.

Hi Kelly,

To format how gifts that have been marked 'Anonymous' appear on your Reports, from the Main Menu, select Tools, User Options, Reports, Gift Preferences and from the drop down box to the right, you can select to either have them appear as 'Anonymous', Leave the name intact or have the name appear but put an asterisk at the end of the line.

I hope that you find this information helpful,

Naomi

Kelly Mccollum:

Also - Anonymous gifts from donors do not appear with donor's name on it, but rather just "Anonymous" and are printed on a separate sheet.  Is there any way for the report to indicate with a symbol (* or something) that certain gifts on someone's statement are "anonymous" - just like they do with soft credits?  My sense is that the Annual Statement Report is not really customizable.

The report does have it's limits for customizing. 

Naomi's reply has exactly what you need for indicating with an asterisk your anonymous gifts. Our report has donor name, an * for anonymous gifts and an # for soft credits.

You're on your way...

In my opinion, Naomi's suggestion is a temporary workaround. By making these changes in User Options you are changing the way you view anonymous donors on ALL your canned reports! So if you do not want all your reports viewed in this manner, you'll need to change it back once you're done with your annual statements.

Jason

did you create your crystal report. if so, would it be possible to see how you set this up.  i am new to using crstal reports. thanks,

Mary, the Redemptorists Denver