How Can I Use Receipting Groups?

Processing Gift Receipts in Virtuous is an excellent opportunity to pair informational details with value-packed messaging that reflects a Donor's unique relationship with your organization. A key feature to lean on to increase the Responsive nature of your Gift Receipts is Receipting Groups, which can help you set rules for how certain Gifts should be receipted! This article outlines best practices and general examples to illustrate the flexibility and benefits of creating and managing a selection of strategic Receipting Groups.

Table of Contents 

1. What is a Receipting Group? 
2. Query Best Practices 
3. Examples 
4. Manually Set Group 

What is a Receipting Group? 

In short, a Receipting Group allows you to define specific criteria (via a Gift Query) that dictates which un-receipted Gift records qualify for which Gift Receipt Templates. Creating a selection of Receipting Groups that covers your typical Receipt use cases can streamline your Receipting process. Below is a list of typical use cases for Receipting Templates and Receipting Groups.

Note: This is NOT an exhaustive list of Receipt use cases. Review your organization's unique needs to assess your Receipt Template needs. 

• Basic Single Gift (Email)
• Basic Single Gift (Mail)
• New Donor Gift Receipt (Email)
• New Donor Gift Receipt (Mail)
• Recurring Donation Gift Receipt (Email)
• Recurring Donation Gift Receipt (Mail)
• Major Donor Gift Receipt (Email)
• Major Donor Gift Receipt (Mail)
• IRA 
• Qualified Charitable Distribution
• Stock

Query Best Practices 

When initially setting up your Receipting Groups, there are a handful of Best Practice recommendations that will result in a selection of Groups that handle the bulk of your typical use cases. Contact, Individual, and other Query types can play a notable role in proper targeting even though the final Queries that will be connected to your Receipting Groups will be Gift Queries. These best practices are demonstrated in the example available in the next section of this article. 

Important Note: The guidance and examples provided here are intended to be baseline parameters. Your organization's unique needs, fundraising practices, and internal processes may warrant additional parameters to manage specific use cases.

Contact Query Tips 

Below are a few tips to keep in mind while formatting your Contact Queries that will be nested into your Gift Query. 

• Email vs Mail: Data Availability - You could group together two main selections of Contact records; those who will receive Email Receipts and those who will receive Mail Receipts. To do this, you will need to create a Contact Query for each use case and then nest them into the respective Gift Query. 
  
  • A Primary Individual with a Primary Email Address is required to receive Email Receipts.
  • A Primary Address must be available on a Contact record to receive Mail Receipts. 
• Be sure to consider any exclusion criteria that should be baked into each Query.
  
  • As an example, a Contact may prefer a single Annual Gift Statement rather than a Single Gift Receipt each month. Keeping a Tag of "Annual Statement Only" as an exclusion criteria will make it easy to remove those Contacts from daily Receipting runs. 
• Consider what Workflows, Donor categories, and other categorizations your organization has in motion when building your inclusion and exclusion criteria. 
  
  • As an example, a Contact with the Tag "First Time Donor" should be excluded from the general Gift receipt selection in order to be paired with the "First Time Donor" Receipt Template. 

Gift Query Tips 

Below are a handful of tips to keep in mind while formatting your Gift Queries that will ultimately be connected to your Receipting Groups. 

• Gift Type - Each Gift Type may call for slightly different merge tags to be used in the Receipt Template.
  
  • As an example, a Stock Gift Receipt requires a Ticker Symbol and the Number of Shares while a Cash Gift does not. 
• Project Designation - Pairing a Gift with a specific Project Designation to a Receipt Template formatted to reference the Project details is a great way to provide Project updates! 
  
  • As an example, a Gift with a Project designation named "New Campus Building Fund" can be paired with a Receipt Template that is formatted with content covering the recent building milestones. 
• Campaign Details - Similarly, pairing a Gift that has resulted from a specific Campaign effort with a Receipt Template outlining the Campaign goals can help continue the conversation beyond the initial Gift. 
  
  • As an example, a Gift that has resulted from an End of Year Fundraising Campaign effort can be paired with a Receipt Template formatted with content summarizing the various highlights from the year.

Examples 

General Donation - Email Receipt 

In the example below, Contacts with a Primary Email Address on file are being targeted as the qualifying selection of Contacts to be Receipted. Name and save this Query with a specific name as it will be used in the next step. Note the excluded Tags being used to filter out possible Contacts that call for a different version of communication. 

Please note that this Contact Query is NOT the Query ultimately used for your Receipting Group. 

After your Contact Query is created, open a new Gift Query. Again, name this Gift Query with a specific name to make it easy to identify when building your Receipting Group. 

Navigate to the Receipting Tool to build your final Receipting Group. From the main Receipting page, select the "Actions" option available in the top right corner of the screen. Select "Create Receipting Group" from the available menu options. 

Enter the appropriate details for the Receipting Group Name and Receipt code. 

Select the Gift Query to be used. 

Then, select the Receipt Format and specific Receipt Template to be paired. 

After you have entered all the correct information, select "Save Receipting Group". 

General Donation - Mail Receipt 

The next example covers a similar use case with the method of Receipt delivery being physical mail rather than email. This means a different type of qualifying data needs to exist on the Contact record to successfully deliver these pieces of mail. 

When building your Contact Query, you will need to target Address data. 

After your Contact Query is created, open a new Gift Query. Again, name this Gift Query with a specific name to make it easy to identify when building your Receipting Group. 

Now, with your final Gift Query ready to use, navigate to the Receipting Tool to create your new Receipting Group in the same manner as the previous example. 

Manually Set Group 

While assembling and fine-tuning your Receipting Groups, you'll notice there is a Group that is always locked named "Manually Set". This Receipting Group acts as an "exception to the rules" you've established with the various Groups you've created. 

As an example, a Major Donor may send in a $5 donation and your Major Donor Gift Receipt Group only qualifies Gifts over $499. During the import process, there is a blue link available at the bottom that says "Show all Gift Information." Select this option and you will be able to access a field titled "Receipt Template." Here, you can manually select which Receipt Template will be used for this specific Gift. 

For a detailed guide covering the full Receipting process, check out this Support Article.