We recommend sending donation acknowledgements soon after the transaction with System Emails and/or System Letters. However, many organizations choose to send an additional message at the end of the year, summarizing contributions. This is not required by the IRS if you have sent contemporaneous acknowledgments for each transaction but can be a part of good stewardship.
Note for Canada-based Organizations: Please refer to this guide when you are ready to issue annual CRA receipts.
You can send end-of-year receipts in a few different ways. Here are suggested messages with tips about how to best acknowledge your constituents' contributions.
Tip: Replace all items in [brackets] with your own information. Replace all items in < > with tokens.
Acknowledging Donations
Organizations only acknowledging donations should send this message in January. It can be sent via campaign email or campaign letter.
Run a report to identify the message recipients as all accounts with donations this year.
Note: When sending a campaign email, these credentials should be set as an email audience before drafting the email.
For a Campaign Letter:
Letters>Campaign Letters & Tracking>New Campaign Letter
Dear <>,
Wow - [year] was a big year for <> as we [moved to a new location, expanded our program offerings, etc]. You helped make it happen!
In [year], you contributed a total of $<<[Year] Calendar Year Donation Amount>>.
<> is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and your donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Our EIN number is ##-#######. No gifts or services were provided to you in exchange for your gift. Instead, we were able to use the full <<[Year] Calendar Year Donation Amount>> to fund our programs.
Thank you!
With gratitude,
[Development or Executive Director Signature uploaded as an image]
For a Campaign Email:
Emails>Email Audiences>New Audience
After creating your audience of all donors for the calendar year using the report credentials, draft your email using the Email Campaign editor.
Emails>Email Campaigns>New Email Campaign
The wording in the campaign letter example above could also work for a campaign email using tokens. Alternatively, the Campaign Email editor has an included content block where you can add a Transaction Summary Table.
Itemized Transaction Table
Neon has a set of email tokens that generate an itemized transaction table that will include all types of transactions (not just donations) and the tax-deductible amount from each. Extra data such as Campaign, Event Name, Membership Level, or store product name(s) are also included.
Sample of options for Campaign Emails:
Sample of options for Campaign Letters:
Itemized Donation Table
Neon also has a set of email tokens to generate an itemized donation table only that includes the total donation amount in the last row. These tokens are for the current and last calendar year as well as the 3 most recent fiscal years and are available for Campaign Emails, Campaign Letters, Donation Appreciation System Emails, and Donation Appreciation System Letters.
Note: Only successful donations and pledge payments are included in the itemized donation table. In-Kind donations will be included in the list (including the description of non-cash donation if one is provided), but the Fair Market Value will not be shown or counted towards the yearly donation total.
These tokens can be used in a Campaign Email or a Campaign Letter to send out itemized receipt emails to your donors at the end of the year, as shown in the example below.
Transaction Summary Table
If you are using a Campaign Email to send out your year-end receipts, you can use the Transaction Summary Table with a built-in content block in the email editor rather than the Itemized Transaction or Donation Tables tokens.
When you’ve added the Transaction Summary Table to your email, you can customize it by clicking the gear icon to the right of the table.
The default table has the constituent’s total transaction amount, transaction count, and tax-deductible total, along with the amount and date for each transaction. However, in the customization pop-up, you will be able to:
- Switch between Calendar Year or Fiscal Year total donations, as well as current year/previous year
- Filter by transactions for the year allocated to a specific Campaign, Fund, or Purpose
- Display other transaction fields on the table, including Campaign, Tender Type, Non-Deductible Amount, and Non-Deductible Description.
- Display transactions made by other members of the same household
- Include pledges, in-kind gifts, Donor Covered Fees, and other transactions types (event registrations, memberships, store purchases) in the table
Once the email is sent, the constituent will see a message such as this: