Lesson 6.8 – Printing and Emailing Donor Receipts

Welcome to Lesson 6.8! Promptly acknowledging gifts is a critical component of donor stewardship and IRS compliance. To streamline this process, FastFund Raising automatically groups all transactions that you flagged with “Print” or “Email” during data entry into centralized queues.

Instead of generating letters one by one, these queues allow you to process large batches of donor acknowledgments simultaneously. In this lesson, we will explore how to manage these queues, generate batch PDF print files alongside mail merge data, and send both individual and bulk email receipts.

1. Accessing the Receipt Queues

FastFund maintains two separate queues for your acknowledgments: one for physical mailings and one for electronic delivery.

Steps to Access the Queues:

1. Select Transactions from the Main Menu.
2. Under the ACTIVITIES section on the vertical sub-menu, click either Receipts to Print or Receipts to Email.
3. The queue list will display all pending acknowledgments, including the Transaction Date, Type, Reference, Constituent Name, designated Receipt Template, and Donation Amount.

Before processing, you can use this screen to double-check your data. You can click on the Constituent Name to instantly jump to their donor profile, or click on the Transaction Reference to drill down into the original donation transaction to make any necessary edits.

[INSERT SCREENSHOT: Display the ‘Receipts to Print’ queue, highlighting the clickable Transaction Reference links and the PDF Preview icons.]

2. Printing Donor Receipts (with Mail Merge)

When you print receipts, FastFund does not just send a file directly to your printer. Because you will likely need to print corresponding mailing envelopes or labels, FastFund generates a comprehensive mailing packet for you.

Steps to Process Printed Receipts:

1. In the Receipts to Print queue, check the boxes next to the specific receipts you want to process, or click the Select All check box in the header row.
2. Click the Selected drop-down menu at the top of the list and choose Print Selected with Mail Merge.
3. A confirmation window will appear. Click OK to initiate the process.

Because this generation can take a few moments for large batches, FastFund processes the request offline. Once complete, the system will send an email to the user who initiated the request. This email will contain a zipped folder holding two items:

• A master PDF file containing all the formatted donor receipt letters.
• A CSV (comma-delimited) file containing all the necessary mail merge data (e.g., Donor Names, Contact Salutations, Addresses, and Donation Amounts) that you can export into your preferred word processor to generate your envelopes or mailing labels.

3. Sending Bulk Email Receipts

Sending digital receipts saves postage and delivers immediate gratification to your donors.

Steps to Process Bulk Email Receipts:

1. Navigate to Transactions > Receipts to Email.
2. Select the receipts you wish to send by checking the corresponding boxes (or use Select All).
3. From the Email Template drop-down menu at the top of the screen, select the specific email template you want to use for the body of the message.
4. Click the Selected drop-down menu and choose Email Selected.
5. Click OK to confirm.

Once FastFund successfully sends the email, the transaction is permanently removed from the Receipts to Email queue.

4. Sending Individual Email Receipts

Sometimes you may want to add a personal touch to a high-profile donor’s digital receipt rather than using the generic bulk template. FastFund allows you to edit and send emails individually directly from the queue.

Steps to Send an Individual Email:

1. In the Receipts to Email queue, locate the specific donor and click the Envelope icon on the far right side of their line.
2. An Email Receipt pop-up window will appear.
3. FastFund will auto-fill the From address with your organization’s default email, the To address with the donor’s email, and populate a default Subject line. You can manually type in a CC or BCC address if needed.
4. The Body of the email will display your default message. You can type directly into this box to add a personal note. (Note: The email body requires standard HTML tags for formatting, such as <br> for a line break).
5. Click the PREVIEW button to see exactly how the email and the attached PDF receipt will look.
6. Click EMAIL to send the message.

[INSERT SCREENSHOT: Show the ‘Email Receipt’ pop-up window, highlighting the From/To fields, the HTML-formatted Body text box, and the EMAIL, PREVIEW, and CANCEL buttons.]