I work at The Atlanta Opera, and we are hoping to automate our gift receipt and acknowledgement letters processes. How are these processes currently set up at your organizations, and to what extent are they automated?
Currently, our staff member, Diana, runs an individual report/merge based on each portfolio manager and also based on different gift types (cash/credit/check, stock, endowment, honorees, creditees, and bequests). Understandably, this takes quite a bit of her time/bandwidth. Our dream would be that as soon as she closes a batch, a gift receipt is automatically emailed, and an acknowledgement letter automatically sent to our printer with the correct portfolio manager's signature, as well as the correct text based on the gift type/amount.
Does anyone know if there is a way to create a single report/merge such that when it is processed through Tessitura and merged into Microsoft Word, the correct portfolio manager's signature is inserted and the correct text inserted based on gift type?
Additionally, doe anyone know if it is possible to automatically send a gift receipt email each time Diana closes a gift receipt batch, whether through Tessitura directly or through integration with email management tools such as WordFly?
Admittedly, I am not on our main Development Operations Team, so I apologize if any terminology is unclear. I have been hunting through the Tessitura training videos and manuals, but I can't find more information. My only idea is to input quite a bit of manual conditional coding into the Microsoft Word mail merge document based on criteria from the Tessitura list pull, but I am hoping someone might have more insight. Thank you so much!
Hey Aaron,
There are many diifferent ways to achieve this and you were right iit was a bit baffling. Good news is that iit should get a lot easier when you move to v16. You can have a listen to that here https://www.tessituranetwork.com/en/Items/Videos/Webinars/2022/v16-for-Communications-Part-2-Templates-and-Emailed-Acknowledgements
So in the meantime (I'm assuminng you are somewhere in v15) there are a couple of options. Your email management solution (WordFly etc) can operate be the conduit for regular outbound. It's worth noting though that the automation here is scheduled not triggered, and so settting the email schedule as often as you need is a consideration. Witth the list that you'll feed in you'll want to time block that out and do a good bit of planning and testing so that you are getting the right people everytime under all conditions. The output set of unique data is also very important. Likely that you'll need to create a specific custom view to get it right there. Protip is to run the list contents off the same custom view as the output data so you know that you always have matching rules. It also means that you can delve into conditional blocks and provide different communications to different segments depending on the output, eg: different wording for different contributed funds. but all from the same scheduled email campaign. Another consideration is iff you need the tax reciept number generated you may have to schedule the print acknowledgement letters report to run before the email schedule (and be careful if your country's daylight saving time is on a diifferent cyle than WordFly Grrrr).
Where I am currently we have a customistion - which can be great as long as you have the team to sevice it and great instructions as to how.
But for now maybe a WordFly scheduled email will hold you over until v16.
Thank you so much, Heath! You are correct, we are currently in v15 (though we will have v16 in the relatively near future). I very much appreciate your explanations and tips - I'll forward to our Development Operations members. Glad to hear that it will be easier with v16!