May 21, 2019 | Categories Donation Processing, Donor Management, DonorPerfect Fundraising Software, DonorPerfect Update, Featured, Monthly Giving

Release Announcement: Stay on Top of Pledge Reminders

Do you use pledge campaigns to engage your donors? Do you struggle to follow up with your donors to ensure that they fulfill their pledges? The newest release of DonorPerfect, due out this weekend, makes it even easier to encourage donors to send in their pledge payments on time. It also includes some quick data entry timesavers that we know you’ll love.

 

Why We Moved Pledge Reminders

Since pledge payments are paid on a regular basis (e.g,. monthly) they are considered recurring payments. Thanks to these great ideas from clients, we’ve grouped Pledge Reminders under the Reminders tab with all recurring giving tasks in Tasks > Monthly Giving. We also improved how to generate pledge reminders. You’ll save time by managing all your recurring giving processes in one convenient place.

 

Stay on Top of Pledge Progress

While pledges are a great way to engage with donors and receive regular income towards a specific program or project, they aren’t guaranteed. You need to follow up with the donors to ensure they send in their payments on time. These tips can help you tackle pledge reminders and keep your pledge program on track:

 

Tip #1 – Set Default Pledge Codes

Save time entering pledges by setting default codes for your pledge campaigns and solicitations in Settings > Defaults. Your codes will be preselected when entering pledges and their payments. You can always change them when entering if needed.

 

Tip #2 – Send Pledge Reminders On A Regular Schedule

Once pledges are entered, use the Pledge Reminders feature to follow up with pledged supporters and collect funds. Send reminders to donors about unfulfilled pledges at least a week before their deadline and then again around 2 weeks after their deadline. Here’s how:

1. Click Tasks > Monthly Giving and select the Reminders Tab.
2. Enter the date to include pledges due through and select your Pledge Processing Settings.

   

3. Click Preview Pledge Reminders and select the donors you would like to generate a reminder for.

   

4. Select or create an export template to use and click Export. You’ll use this export file as the source data in the mail merge for your pledge reminder letters.

For full instructions, visit Running Monthly Pledge Reminders in the Knowledgebase in DP Community.

 

Tip #3 – Download Our Pledge Reminders Letter Template

Download our new Pledge Reminders Letter Template to merge your export of Pledgees into. It’s pre-formatted with the right merge fields, ready to customize for your organization. Check out How to Use the Pledge Reminder Letter Template for step-by-step instructions.

 

Bonus Tip: Upgrade Check Payments to Credit Cards

Do you have clients that regularly give monthly via check? Consider upgrading them to your monthly giving program. When they donate via credit card, Automatic Monthly Giving can process their payment each month without the need to send Pledge Reminders and manually process checks.

 

Customer Ideas: 3 Popular Data Entry Timesavers

Our Suggest and Vote program helps prioritize the improvements implemented in DonorPerfect each month. In this release, we’ve completed 3 of our most customer supported ideas, all submitted by clients like you.

 

Copy a Donor’s Address to Clipboard

Have you ever needed to copy a donor’s address to your clipboard for external use? Now you can, thanks to this suggestion! Click the icon next to the donor’s address. Their information will be copied to your clipboard and available to paste into any program.

 

NEW “Swap Address with Main” Button

Do you have donors that change their preferred mailing address between business and home and then back again? Click on the Swap Addresses With Main button in the Addresses Tab when editing a secondary address. This idea will be a huge timesaver and increase data accuracy since now you won’t have to manually retype the donor’s address information.

 

Instant Merge Now Updates the Thank You Date

Some days, you only have a few gifts to enter. Now, you can quickly merge a single thank you letter after entering a gift into the donor’s record and have it marked as acknowledged. The Thank You Date field updates when you use Instant Merge. This makes it easy to track when you processed the letter. Check out Creating Individual Acknowledgements from a Gift Record to learn more.

Since acknowledgments are different than receipts, the receipt fields will not be updated using this method. Be sure to run a batch report that includes already acknowledged gifts when doing receipting. You may also want to create a contact transaction to show that an acknowledgment was sent.

 

Release Notes

Updates to Pledge Reminders and data entry improvements are not the only changes in this release. Read about all the enhancements in the DonorPerfect 2019.05 Release Notes in the Knowledgebase in DP Community.