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All About Salutations and Donor Recognition: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1165706
In a relationship with your donors, nothing is more important than getting their name right. Have a Board of Trustees member named Fred Summers who should be recognized in your newsletter as Mr. Frederick Summers II, but goes by Moose? There's a place for that! Or, more accurately, a few fields for that.
In this article, we'll cover:
Salutations and Address Names
Salutation data lives on both Account and Contact records in PatronManager. This gives you the flexibility to address an email to your Board Member differently than a letter to that same Board Member and their partner.
Account and Contact records have four standard fields to address your patrons:
- Salutation = what you'd use after "Dear" when writing a letter
- Informal Salutation
- Formal Salutation
- Address Name = what you use at the top of the letter or on the envelope
- Informal Address Name
- Formal Address Name
How do these fields talk to each other?
- If an Account has one Contact: the Informal/Formal Salutations and Address Names will sync up between the Contact and Account records.
- If an Account has two or more Contacts: the Informal/Formal Salutations and Address Names will not sync between the Account and Contact records. You'll likely use a different Address Name and Salutation when communicating with Contacts individually versus the Account as a whole.
What about the Salutation field?
You might have noticed the Salutation field when running reports or editing Contact names.
Just like you can isolate someone's first or last name here, you can also add a salutation, sometimes called an honorific or a title. When donors or ticket buyers use your Public Ticketing Site (PTS) or Donation Forms, they have the option to fill in their preferred salutation. This field is where that preference goes.
Alternatively, if you've disabled Salutations on Donation Forms or the PTS via PatronTicket Settings, this field will not be filled in.
To make your forms welcoming to all patrons, the Salutation field is not required on Donation Forms or on your Public Ticketing Site. Learn more by checking out this article on Maintaining a Gender-Inclusive Database.
Donor Recognition and Acknowledgment Name
Acknowledgment information fields exist on a few types of records in PatronManager.
First, you'll see a field called Donor Recognition on both Account and Contact records just below the Informal/Formal Salutations and Address Names.
There are also a few fields for capturing this information on Donation records.
By default, these fields are included, but not required, on your Donation Forms.
Recommendations and Best Practices
As you've seen, the options for where you can store your patron's preferences are bountiful! Because of this, our most important recommendation is consistency!
Make sure everyone at your organization is aware of which fields are used in letters and reports. If your organizations isn't utilizing a field, remove it from the page layout. Additionally, make sure you have clearly defined style preferences (do you use "and" or "&"?). To help keep your data entry consistent and swift, consider adding or updating the Help Text for your key fields.
Donor Recognition vs Acknowledgment Name
We recommend you use the Donor Recognition field on the Account for the bulk of your recognition reporting.
Why do the Acknowledgment Name and Anonymous Checkbox exist? There are two important reasons!
- When patrons make donations online, they use the Acknowledgment Name and the Anonymous Checkbox fields, so keep an eye on these when qualifying any online donations! You may need to update your Donor Recognition field with this information.
- There are times when you need to acknowledge a donation with a different name than the donor normally uses. For example, a donor that is normally recognized as Stuart and Pat Smith might ask to be acknowledged as The Smith Family for their Capital Campaign contribution. By housing this information on the specific gift, you can easily honor those preferences.
Automation Ideas
By default, most of the recognition/acknowledgment fields on Account, Contact, and Donation records don't communicate with each other. However, that doesn't mean they can't! Below are a few ideas for automating and validating the information in these fields.
Have an idea you don't see here? Test it out in a Sandbox!
If you want to share it with other users, let us know in the Client Community and we can add it here.
The ideas below should be implemented by your organization's PatronManager Certified Admin.
Automation Idea #1: Mismatch Report for Donor Recognition Name and Acknowledgment Name
Why use it: Stay on top of any differences between the Donor Recognition Name field and the Acknowledgment Name.
End result: Get notified when the Acknowledgment Name on the Donation record doesn't match the Donor Recognition Name on the Account record. You can then choose to update one or both of the fields or disregard the mismatch.
What's involved: Create a custom field and a new report.
1.1. Head to Setup and go to the Object Manager tab - search for and click on the Donation object
1.2. From the Donation object, click Fields & Relationships
1.3. Click New
1.4. Choose Formula as the Field Type
1.5. Enter "Recognition Mismatch" for the Field Label and choose Checkbox as the Formula Return Type
1.6. Enter the formula, then click Next
Copy and paste this into formula editor:
PatronDonate__AcknowledgmentName__c <> Account.PatronDonate__Donor_Recognition__c1.7. Click Next again
You can leave everything as-is on this screen!
1.8. Don't add the field to page layouts and click Save
We'll only use this field as criteria in our report. To keep the page layouts nice and uncluttered, uncheck the checkboxes next to the Page Layouts.
2.1. Go to the Reports tab and search for the All Donations report.
2.2. Click Save As to save a copy of the report before we start making changes
2.3. Add filters for "Recognition Mismatch equals True" and "Acknowledgment Name" not equal to " "
2.4. Add the Donor Recognition Name and Acknowledgment Name fields as columns in the report for easy comparison
2.5. Subscribe to the report
To keep an eye on potential mismatches, you can opt to subscribe to this report.
Automation Idea #2: Pre-filling the Acknowledgment Name with the Donor Recognition Name
Why use it: Save time for each Donation created by pre-filling a default value, but allow changes on a donation-by-donation basis.
End result: When you create a donation from a Contact record using the New Donation Lightning Action, the Acknowledgment Name will automatically populate with the Donor Recognition Name from the related Account record.
What's involved: Add a predefined field value to the New Donation Lightning Action.
1. Navigate to Setup, then the Object Manager tab; use the Quick Find box to search for and click on Contact
2. In the "Buttons, Links, and Actions" section, use the Quick Find box to search for and click on New Donation
3. Click "New" on the list of Predefined Field Values
4. Choose Acknowledgment Name as the Field Name
5. Enter the formula
Contact.Account.PatronDonate__Donor_Recognition__c 