An acknowledgment is the tax-receipt letter a donor gets after a gift. Recording a gift never sends one automatically — it always waits in this queue until someone sends it, whether the gift came from the online donate page or was entered by hand.
Before you start
Venue Admin with canViewDonors, or Super Admin.
The acknowledgments queue
Go to AdminVenuesFundraisingAcknowledgments.
The Needs receipt tab is where you'll spend your time — it opens by default and lists every completed gift that hasn't been acknowledged yet. Switch to Acknowledged or All to review what's already gone out.
For a gift with an email on file, click the mail icon to Email receipt. If the donor has no email, that icon is disabled — use the download icon to Download PDF letter and mail it instead.
Once you've mailed a printed letter, click the stamp icon to Mark letter sent so it drops out of the queue.
When the queue is empty, it says so plainly — every completed gift has been acknowledged.
There's no batch "acknowledge all" action today — every gift is emailed or marked sent one at a time. Budget for that if your venue records gifts in large batches (a mail appeal response, for example).
Customizing the receipt language
The legal text on every acknowledgment and year-end statement comes from Donation Receipt Statement, set next to 501(c)(3) Legal Name on AdminVenuesEdit. Leave it blank to use Noctern's standard 501(c)(3) disclosure.
Watch out
Soft-credited patrons are never sent an acknowledgment for the gift they were credited on — only the hard-credit donor is. If a soft-credit recipient also gave their own gift, that gift gets its own acknowledgment normally.
- Open the demo venue's Acknowledgments queue and find the unacknowledged gift on the Needs receipt tab.
- Click the mail icon and confirm the receipt is sent (or note that it's disabled if the donor has no email).
- Check the Acknowledged tab afterward to confirm the gift moved.