The last posts for Data Entry Volume are from 2005 - does anyone have any industry standards for time required for data entry of honor/memorial and tribute gifts into a batch?

Thank you.

Beth Sunseri

Napa Valley Hospice & Adult Day Services

707258-9084 x264

Beth,

At year end we had three batches totaling 104 checks. The batches were mixed checks, some memorial, some same fund solicitation, some unrelated. It took me just shy of 2 hours to get these batches into our system. Most were repeat donors, I added 10 new donors over the total number of checks.

I don't know if there are any industry standards, it depends on how much information you are recording from the batch and how fast your data entry person is.

Karen 

Thank you Karen!

Would you share with me how long it took to print the thank you letters?  Do you use mail merge?

Beth Sunseri:

The last posts for Data Entry Volume are from 2005 - does anyone have any industry standards for time required for data entry of honor/memorial and tribute gifts into a batch?

Beth, I recall several more recent discussions on this. Here's link to one.  (Don't think 'volume' was used, rather amount/numbere)

http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/p/13240/55059.aspx#55059

You're welcome Beth.

Yes, I did use mail merges, the three batches had 5 different mail merges, agency letter (no receipt), master gift letter (receipted), memorial letter (receipted), county fund letter (receipted) and postcard acks.

We use a post card for any gift $100 or under that is not a MaineCF solicitated gift or a memorial.

In the three batches I had 63 post cards (took 10 minutes to export and review).

The balance of the letters took about 3/4 of an hour to export, review and print.

Karen

http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/p/13240/54051.aspx#54051  might help

 Because I am the only one that processes receipts and acknowledgment letters our time frame is much longer then we would like to see. For example: I have a radio marathon to receipt yet. I anticipate about 3000 receipts. This last year took me 21 days of doing NOTHING but entering the data..then printing....THEN folding, stuffing and mailing everything out.

Memorial donations take the longest and I know there has to be a faster way...just not sure how to get there. Currently we are entering them into a batch as normal, sending the receipt to the donor and then preparing a SEPERATE letter manually outside of RE. Anyone have any suggestions?

Amanda-

We also receive hundreds, if not thousands of tribute gifts annually(memorial, honor, pets & people). I understand first hand that tributes do take a little longer to set up, but I have found several short cuts to expedite the process.

I enter all tribute records in RE. If the person is already in RE as a donor - obviously that makes it even quicker since all I have to do is add a record under the tribute record tab. Otherwise, they get a an entire new record.

Then, when I enter into batch it makes it easier to link the gift back to the tribute record. We have a special mail merge letter that is specifed as either honor or memorial in batch. Then when the batch is committed, mail merge will generate the donor letters that will already include the tribute name.

If you aren't using all these features in batch - it will slow you down considerably. Hopefully this information will help. 

Hey Marsha!

That sound like what I am doing....we have a letter that prints as a mail merge with a receipt attached (printed on perforated paper). The third part of the paper will print out with the tribute info ie: donor name and address made a gift in mem of ***. Then I take that piece and send it to the NOK who's info we have been given along with a letter stating that we have received this gift in memory of their loved one. 

Is that something you do as well? 

We don't currently use the receipt feature for the NOK, but that is a very good idea. What we have been doing is running reports on a monthly basis that pulls all of the names of donors from say, the previous 30 days and then send that in a letter format to the specified NOK. So instead of sending a dozen or so receipts to the same person - the get one letter with all dozen names. If they are someone who has asked people to donate in lieu of flowers - we will send a condolence notecard to the NOK.

I don't know if this would work if you get a lot of different tribute gifts. But I have noticed that when memorial gifts come in, they tend to go in waves of several gifts at once so it makes sense for those gifts. For single gifts - like for pets - we just send the letter to the donor and a sympathy pet card to the recipient.

We also get gifts online, which can slow things down. The donor may enter 'Susie Smith' for the tribute, but the existing memorial is for 'Susan (Jones) Smith' and NetCommunity may not pull up that record and will create a duplicate record. The records then need to merged to the original record and cleaned up. I am still working on that issues so if anyone has ideas - please let me know!

Good topic!

Amanda Mumm:

 Because I am the only one that processes receipts and acknowledgment letters our time frame is much longer then we would like to see. For example: I have a radio marathon to receipt yet. I anticipate about 3000 receipts. This last year took me 21 days of doing NOTHING but entering the data..then printing....THEN folding, stuffing and mailing everything out.

Memorial donations take the longest and I know there has to be a faster way...just not sure how to get there. Currently we are entering them into a batch as normal, sending the receipt to the donor and then preparing a SEPERATE letter manually outside of RE. Anyone have any suggestions?

It will definitely take one person quite an amount of time to process 3000 gifts even with years of experience.  And yes, the extra work for processing memorials can take a chunk of time.  Do you have the tribute module?  As the number of memorials/honorariums we deal with is relatively small, we don't.  If you have a large #, I'd sure check into that option.  Each one we get is unique so I don't think of it as efficient entry, but necessary.

In processing the 3000, are all/most already in RE?  One thing I found helpful when entering a large group was to enter those already in RE.  If donor wasn't in RE, I pulled donation slip aside.  I had new constituent batch open also, went to it entered new constits, committed batch and then went back to gift batch and entered gifts from new constits.  I've also streamlined my batch window quite a bit since I started and only displaying the needed fields.  I use defaults whenever possible. :-)

If you get the radio marathon data in a computer file, you could do an import. 

Wish you luck and speedy, accurate fingers...

 Yes, we have the tribute module, that is what produces the little peice for the NOK-works great! I just wish I could figure out how to take the NOK info from the batch and merge it with a letter to sent to the NOK.....does this make sense?

I spoke to someone at last year's conference and they were able to do a merge and on the bottom of their letter was the donor's info....not sure how to get here...also not sure how that would work if there were multiple donors. 

 Thankfully a lot of the constituents for the radio marathon are recurring. But because these are coming in on pledge sheets its just as easy to just enter new and existing as I go. I also use the defaults makes it soooo much nicer!  Does anyone use dashboards?

Right now my main concern is getting these tax receipts out in time....my fingers....are....cramping! LOL 

We do not have the Tribute Module.

 We have set up fields in Gift Attributes.  One  for whether the gift is IHO or IMO.  One for Honoree Name.  One of NOK Name, One for NOK Salutation, one for NOK Address, one for NOK City, one for NOK State, and one for NOK Zip.

 Then, the thank you letter has two pages.  The first page is the thank you to the donor that plugs in the name of the honoree from the Gift Attribute.  The second page is an acknowledgement for the NOK, using the fields from Gift Attribute, that says a gift has been made in IMO/IHO (whichever appropriate) plugged in again from the Gift Attribute and then down the page stating the name(s) of the donor plugged in.

 Works great! 

Christine

Bishop O'Dowd High School

I think I'll try your idea!  Thanks for sharing it.