Tribute gifts and notifying the recipient

Donately has two separate features for gifts given in someone's honour, and the difference between them is the whole point of this page:

• The dedication field records who the gift is for. Nobody is emailed.
• An eCard emails a card to the honoree or their family.

If you want the recipient notified, you want an eCard. The dedication field on its own will not do it.

The dedication field

Open the form, go to Donor Fields, and find Dedication (in honor / memory of) under Standard fields. Set it to Optional to offer it, or Hidden to leave it off.

It is a single free-text line. The donor types a name, and it is stored with the gift.

Where it shows up afterwards:

• On the donation, in the card covering how the gift is listed publicly, as On behalf of. You can edit it there, and the help text notes it is shown under the donor's name on public donation lists.
• In the donations list, as an optional On Behalf Of column and an On behalf of filter with Present and Empty options.
• In exports, as an On Behalf Of column. See Export your data.
• On a recurring plan, in the edit drawer as On behalf of (optional).
• In receipt templates, as the {{donation_on_behalf_of}} merge tag, so the donor's own receipt can acknowledge the dedication. See Donation receipts.

That last one is worth knowing: the dedication can be acknowledged to the donor automatically. It is only the honoree who is not contacted.

eCards, which do notify

Turn on the eCard section of the form builder and the donor gets a structured tribute flow: honour or memory, the honoree's name, the recipient's name and email, a personal message, a card design, whether to hide the amount, and whether to send now or schedule it.

You write the emails, separately for in honour and in memory, plus a shared footer. See Send an eCard with a tribute gift for the full setup.

Using both together

Most organisations doing serious tribute fundraising want both. The dedication line gives you a clean record and a public acknowledgement; the eCard tells the family.

Donately's eCard form template sets both up, with the dedication field and the eCard block in the same step, on the reasoning that who the gift is for and what card they get is really one decision.

Resending

Resend eCard is on the donation, in the eCard card. It emails the card again to the same recipient, which covers a mistyped address or a card that went to spam.

There is nothing to resend for a dedication, because nothing was sent.

Two things to know

Setting the dedication field to Required does not stick. The option is offered, but the setting saves as Optional. Do not rely on it to force a dedication.

Recurring plans carry the dedication, not a repeating eCard. A recurring gift's on-behalf-of value stays on the plan, but an eCard is sent once for the gift that created it. There is no monthly card.