How to create Annual Donation Summary Letters (U.S. Style)
Creating U.S. Style Annual Donation Summary letters is done by running a mail merge and using a template that generates the Annual Donation Summary letter. We recommend starting with the pre-built template on our website titled “U.S. Style Annual Donation Summary,” however, you can create your own template if you prefer.
What is unique about the template for the Annual Donation Summary is a List formula.
Formulas tell Sumac what information from the database it should insert in the resulting merged document. This List formula tells Sumac to insert a list of all the selected donations in the Annual Summary letter for each donor.
If you choose to make your own template for this Annual Summary letter, be sure to include this List formula.
To create Annual Donation Summary letters, open your donations list. Find all the donations made this year using “This Year” in the Advanced search panel. Click Search.
Sumac shows all the donations made this year. You may find it helpful to sort this list alphabetically by the donors' names.
Now that we've found all the donations from this year, expand the Mailing menu and click Mail Merge. In the Mail Merge window, Sumac lets you know that it will process all the donations in this mail merge.
Next, select how you would like to group the donation records in this mail merge. For an Annual Donation Summary letter, group the donations by the donor so Sumac knows to produce one letter for each donor, listing all the donations they made in the year.
Next, select your U.S. Style Annual Donation Summary template.
You can either select a template previously saved in the database or choose a file from your machine (How to Upload Templates into Sumac).
Click OK, and Sumac then asks you where you would like to save these letters.
If you are going to print these letters, choose to merge the results to a single output file.
If you are going to email the letters, opt to create multiple output files, one for each donor, so that you can email them individually later on. For more information about how to email Annual Summary letters, please refer to the Email Receipts article available on our website.
For this example, let's assume that we will be printing these letters, so we'll choose to make a single output file.
Next, choose where Sumac should save this document.
Click OK, and Sumac asks you to confirm that it is going to save this document to a single output file.
Click Yes, and Sumac performs the mail merge.
Sumac also asks if you'd like to save a communication record for the donors included in this mail merge. It is a good idea to do this so that you have a record that you sent their Annual Summary letters.
Click Yes and save a Communication record using Communication Type “Annual Donation Summary.”
Now that we've created the Annual Summary letters and saved communication records for all the donors, we can print the letters.
Open the file that contains the Annual Summary letters. Notice that Sumac has personalized all these letters and listed the appropriate donations for each donor.
After printing these letters, you can create labels or envelopes for these recipients and send out your mailing!
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