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| Re: end-of-year receipts vs. ongoing thank-yous
Posted by Tony Poderis   on 1/10/2008, 9:49 pm, in reply to "Re: end-of-year receipts vs. ongoing thank-yous"
VIP Poster
JT: As the ED, it’s up to you and your leadership to determine the “best” person to sign the acknowledgments. The position of ED is a high one, to be sure, but even more lofty was that of our board president, whom we had sign the letters. I was a lowly Director of Development, and as such, I never wanted to sign the “official” acknowledgments. Volunteer influence and prestige were at work when the chief volunteer signed the thank you letters to his peers. And these were the official notifications which included our warm appreciation and the cold numbers in terms of amount given and date of gift. Just right for the IRS. (But, they could be hand written too---just certain to be written on organization letterhead with the important particulars.)
Volume determines how this is done. Ours was such that, for all gifts up to and including $250, we had a nicely printed thank you card where we could insert name of donor, amount of gift, and date of gift. All others above $250 were personalized and signed by our President. It’s your call, of course, regarding these steps in our process. Other factors at work which will determine the steps we take, would be the time lag involved when someone from out of our office building signs the letters, i. e., her or his availability, and the distance between our offices. We had no problem with this, but it could be troublesome for others.
Independent of this process, I selectively wrote my own handwritten notes. These were always to complement the official letters described above, and were ways for me to further the communication of the regard we had for our donors.
If you do have the letters typed, prepared, and signed by you, it’s always a neat touch, as often as you can, to pen a simple, short, P.S. onto the letter. Again, typed or hand written, just be sure the paper is organization-identified, and that name, gift amount, date of gift, are clearly stated. You only need one, at the minimum. Whatever other communication regarding the same gift, is just nice icing on the cake.
Tony
Tony Poderis
http://www.raise-funds.com
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