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Sending Club Pledge Notifications and Reminders

Keystone provides two types of reports that can be sent to Club Pledge donors: notification letters to indicate when a pledge has become due or to invite the donor to an event related to their pledge, and reminder letters for when payments have not been made.

For other reports, refer to the Club Pledge Reports section. 

To generate notification letters for Club Pledges

When you enter an Event Date for a house (either for a groundbreaking or a dedication), this will trigger notifications for all Club Pledge members with active pledges. These notification letters let members know that it is time to send in their pledged amount for this new house or, if they have already paid their pledged amount, just to invite them to the groundbreaking or dedication event.

Directions to the house are available for use in the notification letter if they have been entered on the Property Acquisition screen and the relationship between the property address and property has been established on the Property Address screen. Directions are limited to 255 characters.

  1. Open the Reports screen.
  2. Choose Development > Fundraising Activities > Recurrent Pledges > Club Pledges > Club Member Notification on the Reports screen.
    This opens the Select Club Member Notification Documents window.

    Three letters are available for Club Pledges. Payment by Check and Payment by Credit Card are used for members who make their pledge payments by check or credit/debit card, respectively. A third letter called Paid is for members who are paid up and are being invited to an event related to their membership, such as a house dedication or groundbreaking.

    You can modify these letters to meet the specific needs of your affiliate. To modify these letters, refer to the Creating or Editing a Template with Microsoft Word section.
  3. Check the Include box next to the letter(s) you wish to generate.
    You can generate more than one letter at a time.
  4. Click the Letters button to export the data to use in creating the notification letters for these donors.
    If a donor with an active pledge has no active address, they will not have any data exported for them or their pledge, nor will they show up as part of the count of donors notified here.

    If any donor you are creating notification letters for does not have a complete mailing address or an Event Time, a dialog will appear indicating that you must correct this before you can generate these letters. For information on modifying a donor’s address, see the Address tab section. For information on how to modify the Event Time for the invitation, see the Dates tab on the Property Addresses screen.
  5. Click the Labels or Envelopes button to generate mailing labels or envelopes to use with sending the notification letters.
  6. Click the Post button to record that these notifications were sent to these donors.
    After this has been posted, Keystone sets the Notification Sent field for each pledge due record to the current date and posts the pledge that is due in the member’s log.

To learn more about how to create additional notification letters for Club Pledge members, refer to the Creating or Editing a Template with Microsoft Word section.

To generate reminders for Club Pledges

Use the Club Pledge Reminder reports to remind donors about their outstanding pledges.

  1. Open the Reports screen.
  2. Choose Development > Fundraising Activities > Recurrent Pledges > Club Pledges > Reminders.
    This opens the Select Club Pledge Reminders screen.
  3. Select the donors’ outstanding pledges for which you want to send out reminders.
    Sometimes a donor may have more than one outstanding pledge obligation and therefore will be displayed in this list for each separate one.
  4. Click the Letters button.
    Keystone then starts an Excel Template to create these reminders.
  5. Click the Get Pledge Reminders button on the Control tab.
    Your reminders are now generated.

    At the end of this process, a Microsoft Excel screen appears asking you whether you want to delete the selected worksheets.
  6. Click the Delete button.
    At this time you will see that a separate tab has been created for each donor that has outstanding pledges. On each of these worksheets is a unique No. identifying the reminder.

    For Club Pledges, this No. includes a C for club pledge, a number for the date, and a sequence number, as in, C041204-01. The date is strictly the reminder date, and the sequence number helps identify the reminder within the batch.

    The Description for each outstanding pledge includes the pledge FRA Abbreviation followed by the Homeowner’s name.
  7. To print these reminders, choose File > Print > Entire Workbook.
  8. To save these reminders, choose File > Save As... and store this document under a separate name.

    9. It is highly recommended that you save a copy of these reminders. If you don’t, you will have no clear way of knowing later what you sent out.

    Make sure that you choose Save As… and not Save from the File menu. If you fail to do so, this Excel template will be overwritten and will no longer work properly.

  9. Close the reminders.

    You are asked if you want to save the pledge reminders.
  10. Click No.

    11. Do not save this file here, as doing so will overwrite your template and cause it to no longer work properly.

  11. If you want labels or envelopes for these reminders, click the Labels or Envelopes button on the Select Club Pledge Reminders screen.
  12. To post the reminders, click the Post button on the Select Club Pledge Reminders screen.

    This posts the current date and the reminder's unique identification number to each donor’s log for which a reminder has been created.