Introduction
Recurring donations can be added to accounts in either of the following ways:
- By processing an initial donation immediately and instructing Neon to repeat the same donation automatically at regular intervals; OR
- By setting up an automated donation series to start at a later date.
You can create special system email or letter versions to acknowledge your recurring donors, and set up conditions to send these versions based on specific criteria.
Depending on how you prefer to acknowledge recurring donations, you can set up conditions for any of the following:
- Only the initial donation in the series, created manually by the donor or a system user.
- Only the donations automatically processed by NeonCRM.
- Any donations in a recurring series.
The acknowledgments that you send for these conditions can include information about the recurring donation series such as the series frequency, the next payment date and the overall end date. You can also tell Neon not to send any acknowledgment.
Conditions for any donation in a recurring series
From the Donation Appreciation system letter /email page, select New Condition.
On the next page, select the desired version to send, and set your criteria based on the recurring frequency. For example, the condition below will send the same email version for both the initial donation and the subsequent, automatically charged donations in a monthly series. Then, select Create Condition.
Your new condition will be listed here. Click on the Version name to preview the version selected for your condition.
Conditions for automatically charged donations only
From the Donation Appreciation system email configuration page, click New Condition.
On the next page, select the desired version to send, and set the Donation Created By criterion Equal to Recurring Donation. Donations processed automatically by the Neon CRM Scheduler will always show 'Recurring Donation' in the Created By field, rather than the name of a constituent or system user.
Select Create Condition to save your condition.
Your new condition will be listed here. Click on the Version name to preview the version selected for your condition.
Conditions for the initial donation only in a recurring series
From the Donation Appreciation system email configuration page, select New Condition.
On the next page, select the desired version to send. For this condition, you will need to set the following criteria:
- Donation Created By Not Equal Recurring Donation
- Recurring Frequency Equal/In Range Of [choose one or all available frequency options]
When finished, select Create Condition.
Donations processed automatically by the Neon CRM Scheduler will always show 'Recurring Donation' in the Created By field, rather than the name of a constituent or system user. To send a specific acknowledgment only for the initial, manually entered donation, set the 'Donation Created By' criterion to exclude donations created by the scheduler.
Your new condition will be listed here. Click on the Version to preview the version selected for your condition.
Do Not Send Email
Instead of having the Donation Appreciation email go out each time a recurring donation is processed, you can create a condition that tells Neon: Do not send email for this special condition.
You can do this by checking the box shown below in Step 2 of the condition setup process.
Select Create Condition to save your condition. Under 'Version Name' the condition will read Do Not Send Email as shown below.
Do Not Send Letter
The above steps also work for system letters. Navigate to the Settings cog > Global Settings > System Letters > Donation Appreciation > New Condition and follow the same steps as above.
Under 'Condition Name' the condition will read Do Not Send.
Available Tokens for Recurring Donation Acknowledgments
If you wish, you can insert the following tokens into your donation acknowledgments that will populate with recurring donation data:
- Recurring Donation End Date
- Recurring Donation Frequency
- Recurring Donation Next Payment Date
These tokens can be found in the Insert <> menu<></></> in the text editor.