Looking for a way to send your donors a summary of their giving with your organization? You can! Donor summaries can be created and sent whenever you need them, making it convenient to provide donors with their giving history if they request it!
Donor summaries contain a list of all gifts a donor has made to your organization for a specific timeframe. Any transactions containing a full refund, chargeback, return, or void are not included in a donor summary. Partially refunded transactions will show up in the summary.
Please note: These summaries are intended for record-keeping purposes only. It’s up to you and your donors to determine what is and is not tax-deductible. Donor summaries are available with the Giving Essentials package. Contact us at support@qgiv.com if you'd like to add a package!
Contents:
Getting Started
To create donor summaries, head to the Data Tools area of your left-hand navigation and click Donor Summary.
Please note: If you don't see this link, it may be because you haven't added the Giving Essentials package. Contact us at support@qgiv.com if you'd like to add a package!
You’ll land on the Donor Summary Report page, where you can search for specific donors and use filters to narrow your results.
Select Donors
First, select the donors for whom you'd like to generate a summary.
You can search by Name or Email. You can search by single search terms or by multiple terms in a range (such as Transaction IDs 2-4) or by terms separated by commas (like a search for all donors named Stan, Charles, or Betty).
The Range drop-down offers a custom date range option, which you can set using the date and time fields.
By default, all of the donors who have given to your organization during the specified range are displayed in the table. Use the checkboxes to select/deselect donors as needed.
Add Email
You’ll also want to update email addresses for donors who don’t have valid email addresses associated with them (if you have that information, of course!). If there isn’t a valid email address associated with a donor, you’ll see the Add Email option in the table.
When you click Add Email, you’ll be taken to the details page of the transaction, where you can enter an email address for the donor.
If you click the donor’s name from the Donor Summary table, you’ll be taken to their transaction receipt, at which point you can click Edit next to the Personal Information area to update the donor’s email address. Either method achieves the same thing. Once you’ve made any necessary changes, click Save Personal Information.
After saving, you’ll need to navigate back to the Donor Summary Report area. Your list of donors will be refreshed and display the email address(es) you just entered.
Advanced Filtering
The Advanced Filtering button gives you the option to filter by Forms, Frequency, or Donation Methods.
If you select Forms, you can choose the form(s) for which you’d like to display donors. You can choose one, multiple, all forms, or all active forms.
If you have a large number of forms, they’ll appear in a drop-down menu instead of as buttons. You may see a status indicator next to some forms in parenthesis, such as deleted, demo, or closed. Even if a form has been closed or deleted, you can still generate donor summaries for that form.
If you filter by Frequency, you can see only the donors who gave at a certain frequency during the specified timeframe. This is useful if you only want to send summaries to monthly donors, for example.
Filtering by Donation Methods will display All Donation Methods, Online, or Offline donations. If you choose offline, you can further specify if you'd like to view All Offline gifts, only Verified donations, or only Unverified donations.
Once you’ve selected the donors to whom you’d like to send summaries, click the Continue button located along the bottom of the table.
Summary Email
You’ll be taken to an area where you have some customization options for the report and the email your donors will receive.
Along the top of the screen, you’ll see a message telling you how many donors will receive summaries. If you still have donors without valid email addresses associated with them, you’ll see a separate message containing those details. You’ll still be able send out your summaries—just be aware that those donors without email addresses won’t receive an electronic copy.
Use the toggle to decide if you want to Encrypt PDF Receipts. When enabled, the summary PDFs that are sent to donors will include View Only permissions and be locked for editing. This is required in certain cases, such as when submitting documents to the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency).
Below that, you’ll see that you can give your report a Title. This is only visible to org admins, not to your donors. If desired, you can also enter a Description.
Next, you’ll see an area where you can customize the email donors will receive. You can enter a sender's name in the From Name field. In the Reply To Email Address field, enter the address to which you’d like donors to respond if they have any questions.
You can edit the email subject and any of the body content as desired.
The Insert Tags drop-down contains the following tags that will populate with the correct information once the email is sent:
- %OrganizationName% populates with your organization’s name.
- %DonorName% lists the donor’s first and last name.
- %DonorTotalContributedAmount% displays the total amount given by the donor in the timeframe you specified while generating the report.
- %ContributionFromDate% is the start date you specified when generating the report.
- %ContributionToDate% is the end date you specified when generating the report.
You can further customize the summary email by adding images. Just click the picture icon in the upper left corner of the summary email box. A window will appear where you can enter the image properties and add a link to your image's URL.
Creating a Template
Want to create a specific donor summary template? Select Create a new template from the drop-down menu above the Summary Email Body area.
Beneath the body of the custom donor summary email enter a name for the template and select Save Template.
Once saved, you can delete outdated templates by opening the template from the Template drop-down, scrolling down beneath the email content, and selecting Delete Template.
PDF Content
You can also add custom content to the Donor Summary PDF attached to the Donor Summary email. Scroll down to Additional Content for the PDF Summary and add in the additional content you want to display on the donor summary PDF attachment.
Send or Preview
Next you can proceed to send the donor summary email or preview before sending summaries.
Selecting Preview Summary will display the send details as well as give you the option to look at the PDF attachment of the donor summary before sending. This is especially helpful if you added custom content to be added to the PDF.
To view the PDF, click the PDF icon in the Summary column of the preview. You can also download a CSV or Excel file that shows the donor’s first and last name, email address, a count of how many times they’ve donated, and the grand total of their donations.
When you're ready, click Send Summary Email to send the donor summaries to their recipients.
After sending the summary, you’ll see the Donor Summary History table. While your donor summaries are being generated, the dot to the left of the row will be gray, which means the generation of your individual summaries is in progress. The dot will turn green once the summaries have been sent.
Reviewing Sent Summaries
Click View Details to review the transactions that were included in the summary. If you click View Details while the summaries are generating, you’ll see an hourglass icon in the Status column.
Once your summaries have been sent, the messaging above the table will update and the hour glass icons will turn into green checkmarks.
If you’d like to view a donor summary, print a copy for your records, or if you’d like to mail one to a donor, you can click the Adobe PDF icon in the Summary column. This is part of what your donors will receive as a PDF attachment to the email from your organization:
If you’d like to add View Only permissions to the PDFs before you download them, click the Encrypt PDF Receipts on Download toggle. This provides added security and is required in some cases, such as when sending documents to the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency).
You can download the complete version of a sample PDF at the bottom of the article.
The Donor Status Summary report can be downloaded in CSV or Excel format. It contains the list of donors who were sent summaries, along with their email, transaction number (only if there isn’t an email associated with a particular donation), transaction count, and the status of the report delivery. If there were any errors during the summary generation process, that information will appear in the Error column.
Back on the main Donor Summary page, you’ll see that you can toggle between the report page and the history page by using the tabs in the upper right-hand corner.
There's also a Donor Summary system notification that can be sent to users and/or recipients in your system. Visit the Notifications area in your organization-level control panel to manage those options.