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Best Practices: Tips for Acknowledging Split Contributions

  • January 21, 2025
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(2 min read)

When a contribution is made that is split among many different funds, the way you handle the acknowledgments depends on your donors' needs. There are a few common ways to handle these acknowledgments and each is easy to set up using the Contribution Acknowledgment Report to create files for your mail merge letters.

Read more about generating mail merge letters



In your Contribution Acknowledgment Report, you can filter on three Split Contributions options to help you track your splits:

  • Split Status - The status can be None (not part of a split), Initial (the initial contribution), or Split (the added or linked split contribution)

  • Amount Including Splits From - Limits your search to amounts higher than the number you select

  • Amount Including Splits To - Limits your search to amounts less than the number you select


Filters on the report with Split status set to Initial and Split

 

Separate letters for each split

 

Probably the easiest way to handle these acknowledgments is to treat them the same way you do all your other individual contributions. Generate your Contribution Acknowledgment Report the way you usually do and just include these contributions in your usual workflow as if they were individual donations.

 

While this is probably the most natural way for your organization to handle these gifts, this can sometimes be confusing for donors who are receiving notices for many smaller donation amounts that add up to their overall contribution.

 

Create a summary letter for all contributions in the split group

 

Since a split group is usually one transaction that is represented by multiple gifts, it may make for a better donor experience to only generate one letter for the overall transaction.

 

You can more easily create these summary letters by filtering out all the records that have the Split Status set to Split from your Contribution Acknowledgment Report. You can then replace the Remaining Amount column with the Amount including splits column to use as your amount field for your letters.

 

Customize your acknowledgment

 

You might decide that it makes more sense to exclude split contributions from your usual way of creating acknowledgments altogether and instead earmark those donations to be acknowledged as part of your major donor program. This will allow you to create custom letters that include the fund name for each gift or that provide more tailored communications for these kinds of donors.

 

If you decide this is the best option for you, you will want to make sure that you are excluding all your split contributions from your usual acknowledgments by only including contributions with the Split Status of None whenever you run your report.