Memorials and Tributes

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As we approach the Memorial Day holiday, we remember the members of our armed forces who died while serving our country. We hold community dedications and parades, fly our flags proudly and place flowers on our veterans’ grave sites. In short, we find meaningful gestures to honor our deceased soldiers and veterans.

Tribute and memorial donations are a powerful way to connect with your donors and a common part of many development programs. These thoughtful gestures, however, can be even more valuable than their original intentions and your fundraising software should serve to facilitate the receipt and processing of these valuable gifts.

Here are some of the benefits to using the Tribute features in ResultsPlus and the reasons why they may be important to your development effort:

You can associate an honor or memorial gesture to a gift or a pledge.

  • The ability to add a meaningful gesture may be what motivates a donor to give a first gift to your organization.
  • A constituent who names your organization as the beneficiary of tribute gifts may be introducing you to someone who will become a long-time donor.
  • Allowing a tribute to be associated with a pledge can encourage larger gifts to be made and received over a longer period of time.

You can automatically generate acknowledgement letters that contain the name of the person being honored.

  • Inserting the name of the honoree into your thank-you letter acknowledges the gesture and shows the donor that you are paying attention to their wishes.
  • Using the mail merge feature to generate acknowledgment letters helps facilitate the process and reduces errors and duplicate data entry.

You can automatically generate letters to notify loved ones and interested parties that a tribute gift has been made.

  • Notifying an honoree or the family of a deceased person that a tribute gift has been made saves a step for the donor and authenticates the gesture. When the notification comes from you, the recipient knows the gift has been made and is already helping with your mission.
  • Using the mail merge feature to generate notifications helps facilitate the process and reduces errors and duplicate data entry.

You can print a number of reports showing tribute activity for a specific time period, a given honoree, or a summary of notificants.

  • You can easily generate a report showing all the memorial gifts, for example, received for a given constituent. Providing this list to the family of the deceased provides them with a concise list of names and addresses that they can use for additional acknowledgment.
  • Using the Tribute Analysis reports helps analyze past tribute gift activity, assisting with planning and future marketing efforts.
  • The Tribute Gift Roster report allows you to easily print a list of all honorees, often presented in the organization’s newsletter or annual report to donors.

So, do all you can to help your donors make these meaningful gifts, in honor and memory of important people and events and all throughout the year.

And please join us in honoring the valiant members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard who have given their lives while in service to our country.