Overview
Listed below are some good questions we received about our email templates and letters generated that are commonly used for automatic receipting, but also for physical mail merges.
Linked Articles:
- Creating Email/Letter Templates
I created a template, but it isn't showing as an option in the drop down box under the Receipts section of my Campaigns.
In order for templates to be available when choosing a default receipt, the template type needs to be "Transaction and Non-Cash Gift Receipt". You can edit the template and update the Email/Letter Type for this to appear.
Why can't I delete my Template? What does "in use" mean?
If a template has been selected as the default template to be used somewhere in your Kindful settings or campaigns you will see the grey words "In Use" in the bottom right corner of the template box instead of the red words "Delete."
A template can be marked "in use" even if the campaign using it has been disabled. To find which campaign is using it you will need to check your disabled and enabled campaigns to see if the template in use has been assigned as one of the receipt types.
Go to Fundraising>Campaigns> find the campaign you believe is using the template and click the pencil and square edit button>then check the selection under "Default Campaign", "Default Recurring" and "Subsequent Recurring" receipts. To check disabled campaigns do the same process after selecting the "Disabled" tab at the top of your campaigns. 
If you still can not find the template in use in your campaigns it may be in use in either your Transaction Settings default receipts. Go to Settings>Fundraising Settings> Transaction Settings and check the section for "Receipts".
One last place it could be is an Acknowledgement Letter.
Go to Communication> Acknowledgments> find which letter it may be attached to and hit "Edit list" on the far right options> see if it's selected under the "Edit Filter" section. If so de-select it by selecting "select Email/Letter Template"
Once the letter/template is no longer selected in any campaigns, settings or lists you will be able to delete it by returning to the template location and hitting "delete" where the "in use" used to be.
Can we use an integrated email client like Mailchimp to send automatic emails for online donations?
You absolutely can use a tool like Mailchimp to send a variety of emails to your donors. The only difference is that it will not send automatically like Kindful will. You could regularly add your donors to a Group in Kindful, which will move them into Mailchimp with a corresponding Tag. You could then set up email communication.
Can I disable the checkbox that is automatically selected to send an email receipt upon gift entry?
You cannot disable the box asking to send a receipt to a donor when adding a manual transaction. However, you can turn off automatic emails on a per-campaign basis. Do this by selecting the checkbox titled "Disable transaction success emails?" when editing the corresponding campaign. This will ensure the donors do not receive a receipt automatically, regardless of entry method.
The wrong template was sent out automatically when a donor gave to our campaign. How can we fix this?
If you have a receipt template set in the Campaign, that will be the top priority. If you do not have a template set in the Campaign, the template you select in Transaction Settings will be the default. If you have nothing set there, the Kindful default template (Transaction Successful Messaging + Transaction Info For Receipt tag) will be sent.
Can I update my Official Tax Receipt Template and add a special message to it?
To add additional messaging to your tax receipting, we recommend using a Cover Letter which can be generated using the Tax Summary Tool process. You can customize a basic footer message on your Official Tax Receipt Template, but, as is highlighted in the app, we recommend this being a general tax statement.
Can I add a link in my email receipts?
If you format a link properly, e.g. https://kindful.com, the email client that the donor uses to receive the email communication (e.g. Gmail) will often convert that into a clickable link. There is not a way to directly format a template to include a link otherwise in the tool bar.
Can we include images in our templates?
The only image that can be added is a signature image file. This is set in the "Images" section of your Settings > General Settings page.
When I click Preview, it is not showing what I would expect.
The Preview function is more about showing what type of data the tags will populate (e.g. $25) and how the spacing and margins will line up. It is not going to pull active data based on the tags - when you click Preview, it is not actually generating a letter based on any specific data, so it might appear to be incorrect or confusing.
What tag(s) can I use to properly address an Organization type record?
When addressing an organization, instead of seeing the company name, you may be seeing the contact at the company repeated on the first and second line. This happens when the "Formal Name" field is filled in on the corresponding contact profile. If you leave this field blank inside the profile, then the company name should display automatically.
If you want to address the organization, the "Formal Name" or "Informal Name" template tags should be used.
These would display the organization's name by default as long as the matching "Formal Letter Name" and "Informal Letter Name" fields inside the profile are empty. If the fields inside the profile are filled, the tags would display whatever is there.
Can we use an integrated email client like Mailchimp to send automatic emails for online donations?
You absolutely can use a tool like Mailchimp to send a variety of emails to your donors. The only difference is that it will not send automatically like Kindful will. You could regularly add your donors to a Group in Kindful, which will move them into Mailchimp with a corresponding Tag. You could then set up email communication.
When I select "generate letter" when trying to download and print off a mailing, nothing is sent to my inbox. How can I access the letter?
When you go through the process to "Download Letter", Kindful works behind the scenes to generate a PDF file of all of the letters. The link to this file will be emailed to you when it is ready; typically, this does not take long to generate. However, once the email sends from Kindful's servers, we cannot control how long it will take to get to your inbox. Due to these external environmental elements, it can feel like there is a delay.
While you can expect the email to arrive when your email inbox allows for it, you can also speed up the process by going to the History page in Kindful (Reporting > History). Here, you can find a list of all recent reports and downloads, including this letter that was generated. You will see the letter along with a timestamp of when you clicked the button to download the file. On the right-hand side of the link, you will see an option to "Download" the file. Oftentimes, when you are waiting for the file to arrive in your inbox, navigating to the History page will show you the letter ready to be downloaded faster.
Since I will be printing this on organization letterhead, I need to delete our logo that is in the upper left corner. However, part of the logo would be great in the upper left of the receipt box at the bottom of the letter.
If you want to print on letterhead, I'd recommend creating a separate letter template with the Email/Letter Type = Thank You Letter. For emailed receipts, it needs to be a Email/Letter Type = Transaction & NonCash Gift Receipt (so it can be emailed).
On the emailed receipt, I would definitely leave the logo on it to keep branding present.
To disable the auto header on the print (Thank You Letter) receipts, select the dropdown labeled Custom Header Settings. Turn this off, allowing space for your letterhead. You may want to print a test to make sure you don't need additional spacing at the top, depending on how large your letterhead is.
The image in the receipt box pulls from the profile of the donor, so if they have an image, that will populate. These images are sourced from a social integration we use, so images populate automatically.
Is it possible to change the wording in the receipt box to say something other than "General Payment Receipt"?
Make sure you are using the Transaction Info For Receipt tag in your template for that box. To change the language on the receipt, you need to appropriately title your Campaign, as that's what is feeding that line on the receipt box. You can go to Fundraising, then Campaigns, and edit the Campaign to read Annual Fundraiser.
What are Email/Letter Template margins for printing?
For print (i.e. Letter Templates), the left and right margins are .83 inches, while the top and bottom margins are .73 inches. You can also set Margins on templates that are not set for email.
What type of envelope should I use?
When printing envelopes for your mail merge, "Business 10" is the most compatible type of envelope to be used in Kindful.
Why do my templates have weird spacing when the donor gets them via email?
When you have templates created in another word processing application (e.g. Microsoft Word), those, applications have hidden formatting included in them. This is done so that your documents look good when using those applications. But, when you copy+paste those letters into Kindful's template editor tool, it can produce some awkward results. To best get around this, we have a couple of solutions:
- Create and type up your template directly into Kindful's template tool.
- Since option 1 might not be as feasible, and you may have your letters already created elsewhere, you can copy the body of those templates and paste them into an application like NotePad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). You can also copy+paste into a New Doc on Google Docs. Once the template is copied into one of these applications, you an re-add spacing in there. Once you have it as you wish, you can copy from that template editor application, and then paste from there into the Kindful template editor. Doing this process will strip that hidden formatting created by your word processing application.
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