November 2021 Release Notes

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Have you ever had a donor call and ask to change the schedule for their monthly gift, only to have to cancel their existing Gift, then create a new one, and ask for their credit card information all over again?

Wouldn’t it be swell if you DIDN’T have to do that again?

Well then you’re in luck, because in this release, we’ve added the ability to modify Recurring Gifts!

Now, sure, we’ve always had the ability to edit Recurring Gifts. But now, specifically, you’ll be able to edit the frequency and even change the payment schedule by selecting a new date for the next expected payment!

If you are using Virtuous Giving, these changes will take effect in Virtuous Giving, and your donor will receive an automatic email notification of the change to their recurring charge.

Making changes to a Recurring Gift will create a new expected payment, reflecting the new expected date or frequency. This new payment will not replace any of the existing expected payments, so you will need to forgive any outstanding payments once you have made your changes.

*TV Pitchman voice*
BUT WAIT...THERE'S MORE!

Yes, with these changes, we've also introduced the ability to forgive past due payments in bulk (on an individual recurring gift, that is—let's not go blowing up all of our recurring gift tracking in one shot now, OK?). This way, once you've modified an existing Recurring Gift, you can easily modify any incorrect past due payments and preserve an accurate past due balance and Recurring Gift status.

We know that many of you have asked for these features for a while now—trust us when we say that we are just as excited as you are that they are finally here! And while we don't normally share spoilers here, this is just the first step for recurring gift updates. Coming soon, you'll even be able to update the recurring gift amount! Keep your eyes peeled for that upcoming release!

Want to learn more about Recurring Gifts? Well you can start here, and then take a gander here, give this video a whirl, and of course, check out this article for more on modifying Recurring Gifts.

Don't Mind Us, Just Passing Through

We know that passthrough gifts play an important role in understanding donor interests, and in analyzing a donor's giving history. This is part of why we've always focused on making it easy to see how much any particular Contact has given directly and via passthrough giving, as well as the combined total. We've even got a whole range of Contact statistics dedicated to passthrough giving! And, of course, it's easy to modify the widgets on any Contact record to see passthrough giving data at a glance.

And now we're taking another step to make passthrough giving even more visible and accessible. Specifically, we've added passthrough gifts to the Contact activity feed. So, now you'll see any passthrough gift activity listed alongside notes, email sends, and all the other super cool activity listed on the Contact overview tab.

This also means that if you are following any Contacts who give passthrough gifts, you'll see that show up in the following activity on your dashboard. BONUS!

BRING OUT YER DEAD!

When you're working in Virtuous, there's a lot to think about: which data relates to Contacts and which to Individuals, the differences between Pledges and Recurring Gifts, why the icon for Grant Management is a leaf...seriously, it's a lot. But never fear! We're here to help.

In particular, with this release, we've added a notification to help with marking Individuals as deceased. Now, if all of the Individuals on a Contact are deceased, you'll be prompted to archive the Contact, with the option to keep the Contact active instead if necessary.

So, instead of having to go search for our Best Practices for Managing Deceased Records article each time, or forgetting entirely, we'll remind you to take the next step. Because we're helpful like that!

...And the Rest

As with every release, this month's update also includes a number of other fixes, tweaks, minor modifications, and assorted nudges. Among this month's assorted fixes:

• Zapier users, this one's for you! We've added two new triggers that you can listen for when building your zaps: Contact Note added and New Form Submission. Now, you can send Slack messages to your team whenever someone submits a form on your website, or get an alert when someone logs a call with one of your donors. Even if that someone is YOU.
• Have you ever wished upon a star that you could send an email and target your recipients using just an Individual query instead of an email list? Well congratulations, because your wish just came true! (Maybe wish for an end to world hunger next, or a new Tesla...you're on a roll!) Now, you can choose to target emails using an Email list—which lets you refine your audience by using multiple Contact or Individual queries, if needed—or by using  Contact OR Individual query, all by it's lonesome.
• Bulk updates from the query tool can be handy when you want to make the same change to multiple records, but when you want to set different values for a whole host of records—for example, maybe you want to change the External Accounting Code or the Need Amount for several Projects, but each needs a different value—the query tool alone simply won't do. Well, not you can use the Bulk Data Tools to update Projects! Just download the Project Update template, make your changes, and then import your file. Presto! New Project values!
• API Nerd Alert! We've added support for Tributes to our API, so now you can find a Tribute, or create a new one, or even update an existing Tribute, all via the API. Ain't technology grand?