Acknowledgment question

Lisa,

i am curious, what was the standard IRS language you were using?

I am not sure what your gift volumn is but it sounds like ALOT of extra work to create two pieces of paper, and make sure they end up in the right envelope together.

We are using a very personalized (mail merge) letter, that talks mainly about their membership and BAM and such but includes this sentence:

For your records, please note that your contribution is tax-deductible as permitted by law.  Details are outlined below, and we recommend that you retain this document for tax purposes.

The following sentence is added (through mail merge logic) if they waived their membership benefits:

We have waived your non-deductible membership benefits so that this gift is fully tax-deductible.

Then the letter ends with a goodbye, hope to see you often, and a signature and such and in the bottom we list the detail of their gift (date, amount, receipt number, value of goods and services, ...) 

Again, here at BAM we are also very concerned about the look of this letter, so the weight is definitly on a big thank you and all the exciting things they can now do with their membership, or in case of a sponsor, all the great things WE will do with their money, and so on and so forth. But we did want this to be a receipt as well, so this information just sits on the bottom.

hope you can talk to your managing director one more time.

Monika 

Hi all -

We are in the process of reviewing and/or overhauling our acknowledgment process.  I am looking for some feedback.

Our managing director wants to play a bigger role in acknowledging our donors, which is great.  However, he is pretty dead-set against including the standard IRS "language" at the bottom of the letter (which is what we've always done).  He wants the letter to be more personal, and feels that the tax language destroys this somehow.

After some discussion, we think we may have arrived at a solution of sorts, which is to run the letter sans the IRS language, and include some kind of a "buck slip" which would detail the gift specifics (amount, date received) plus the language.

I am wondering what other organizations are currently doing, and/or if anyone would be willing to share samples of their acknowledgment letters and/or receipts.

Thanks much!

-Lisa McColgan

Annual Fund Coordinator, Huntington Theatre Company

This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!

Lisa,

i am curious, what was the standard IRS language you were using?

I am not sure what your gift volumn is but it sounds like ALOT of extra work to create two pieces of paper, and make sure they end up in the right envelope together.

We are using a very personalized (mail merge) letter, that talks mainly about their membership and BAM and such but includes this sentence:

For your records, please note that your contribution is tax-deductible as permitted by law.  Details are outlined below, and we recommend that you retain this document for tax purposes.

The following sentence is added (through mail merge logic) if they waived their membership benefits:

We have waived your non-deductible membership benefits so that this gift is fully tax-deductible.

Then the letter ends with a goodbye, hope to see you often, and a signature and such and in the bottom we list the detail of their gift (date, amount, receipt number, value of goods and services, ...) 

Again, here at BAM we are also very concerned about the look of this letter, so the weight is definitly on a big thank you and all the exciting things they can now do with their membership, or in case of a sponsor, all the great things WE will do with their money, and so on and so forth. But we did want this to be a receipt as well, so this information just sits on the bottom.

hope you can talk to your managing director one more time.

Monika 

Hi all -

We are in the process of reviewing and/or overhauling our acknowledgment process.  I am looking for some feedback.

Our managing director wants to play a bigger role in acknowledging our donors, which is great.  However, he is pretty dead-set against including the standard IRS "language" at the bottom of the letter (which is what we've always done).  He wants the letter to be more personal, and feels that the tax language destroys this somehow.

After some discussion, we think we may have arrived at a solution of sorts, which is to run the letter sans the IRS language, and include some kind of a "buck slip" which would detail the gift specifics (amount, date received) plus the language.

I am wondering what other organizations are currently doing, and/or if anyone would be willing to share samples of their acknowledgment letters and/or receipts.

Thanks much!

-Lisa McColgan

Annual Fund Coordinator, Huntington Theatre Company

This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!