My development colleagues seem to have asked this question about a hundred times in as many different ways, so I want to make sure I'm clear on the subject before I give them a final, (hopefully) definitive answer. They want to automate the acknowledgement letters process, but don't want to do it the way Tessitura has set it up ("too much trouble"). So, they have entreated me to build a report with the appropriate columns of information for our Reporting Services site. I've told them my only concern is that by cutting out the canned report, it's possible that some other maintenance functions initiated by the report (and its constituent, background stored procedures) may get neglected and we may not find out about the issue until a huge problem backlogs on us. Otherwise, it's not particularly difficult to locate and pull the appropriate columns and tables they want output. As a workaround, I've been having them send me the output saved to an Excel file, and I run a routine that pulls the information for an additional column they want in the output.
So, my question is this: Can we stop using the Acknowledgement Letters canned report (and the stored procedure(s) activated by it) and simply grab the appropriate columns from the corresponding tables (i.e. T_CONTRIBUTION, et al), or will something not be getting done that we will wish had been getting done later?
Thanks in advance, Tessiturians, and forgive me if I've already asked this. I just want to be clear on the implications of not following established Tessitura guidelines...
I’m almost always sorry if I do an end-run around working Tessitura functionality…
We used to use a hundred different ack letters (only a slight exaggeration) but are now down to a couple. We’ve added two custom fields to the acknowledgment report (a default program book listing, so people can let us know if they want to change how they are being recognized) and a corporate recognition name; we also use all of the custom fields available in gift entry, mostly for when we have items in an acknowledgment such as auction or raffle items (so we can describe the item), when we have online auctions that require tax receipts (including shipping, sales tax, and deductible amounts), and when we’ve received stock gifts. We use one of the custom text fields to input a phrase that fits into our generic letter and describes the specifics of the gift, such as “your 2011-2012 annual membership” or “your gift in memory of Mrs. Joe Schmo.”
The acknowledgment report merges directly into a Word template and is easy to run. We have the person who enters gifts also run the acknowledgment letters as part of the process; she segregates certain gifts in batches based on the salutation needed for the letter for some categories of gift (our Guild members potentially have a salutation specific to the Name 2 on the account, for instance). Then she creates a list of everyone in that batch and runs letters specifically for that batch before pulling all other unprinted letters that don’t require a non-standard salutation.
If you step outside of Tessitura functionality for acknowledgments, you run the risk of having people slip through the cracks occasionally; and you have no record within the gift that it was, in fact, acknowledged, and when.
Our process is evolving toward the simpler; but it seems manageable, to me, and we deal with the same staff turnover issues, and frequent retraining, as you’d expect for a small nonprofit organization.
Lucie