Your organization strives to make the most out of every gift, regardless of the donation amount. All gifts make an impact on your organization—from buying office supplies to organizing events. When donations are made, it’s important to show donors how much their contribution means to the success of your organization.
Reaching out and engaging with your donors is a great way to cultivate a list of people who give regularly. But sending a good thank you letter is about much more than simply encouraging additional donations. When people make a donation to a nonprofit, they care about seeing how their gift is being used to benefit the organization.
If your organization is lucky enough to receive many donations each month, sending out personalized thank you letters to every donor may not be feasible. This is where thank you letter automation comes in. Automating your nonprofit gift acknowledgement letters doesn’t mean sending out impersonal responses that address donors as “dear friend”. Formstack Documents makes it easy to send out personalized thank you letters as soon as donations are made to your organization.
Here are some dos and don’ts of adding thank you letter automation to your nonprofit organization’s workflow.
DO send timely responses.
When donors make a contribution through your website or online form tool, make sure to send a prompt response. It needs to include information about their gift so they can keep a file for tax purposes. By law, any public nonprofit organization is required to send a formal acknowledgement letter to anyone making a donation of over $250. The donor will need your formal acknowledgement letter as proof of contribution to claim a tax deduction.
Promptly sending your contribution acknowledgement letter helps your organization meet legal requirements. Plus, you’re donors will appreciate that they don’t have to worry about reaching out to your organization for paperwork or hunt for physical documents when tax season comes.
Chocorua Lake Conservancy, a small, all-volunteer land trust in New Hampshire, uses Formstack Documents to automatically send prompt thank you letters when they receive donations.
According to Chocorua’s board president, before Formstack Documents, they had to “run a report of all recent new donations, run a mail merge with a form gift acknowledgement letter, then print out, sign, and mail 30-40 letters in a batch. Formstack Documents has made it MUCH easier for me to automatically generate personalized, mail-merged gift acknowledgment letters to donors within days of their donation.This saves me many hours of drudgery every month, and gives me a way to spread the workload to other board members.”
DON’T limit thank you letters to only donors who gave large amounts.
The IRS only requires you to send nonprofit gift acknowledgement letters when donors make a gift in the amount of $250 or more. But it's important to emphasize that every gift helps. Anyone making a donation to your organization cares about the cause you are trying to support or the change you’re working to effect. No matter the amount, make sure to explain how your donor’s gift impacts your organization, advances your cause, and improves someone’s life. Providing ALL of your donors with a warm, personalized thank you letter that explains the impact of their donation keeps people engaged with your brand. Who knows, they could sign up for a continuous contribution or make a larger secondary gift in the future!
Keep your nonprofit organization focused on your goals by eliminating manual data entry and paper processes from your workflows. Formstack Documents is an as easy-to-use, customizable letter automation tool. Now, you can automatically generate and send personalized thank you letters as soon as donations are made. Formstack Documents has even created some customizable examples to help you build your own custom charitable contribution acknowledgement letter template.