Follow these steps to help you prepare, customize, and ensure your year-end contribution statements are accurate and professional. You'll also learn best practices for ongoing database maintenance.
Bonus: Download a handy PDF for later reference. 📥 Click here to download your Year-End Checklist
Why a Year-End Checklist?
The end of the year is busy — holidays, tax season, and closing the books all at once. Having a clear checklist ensures nothing is overlooked and reduces stress by breaking large tasks into manageable steps.
Video Overview
Note: This video often refers back to our downloadable checklist.
Helpful Timestamps:
- Organizations with Giving Only - see 0:24
- Organizations with Giving and ChMS - see 2:44
- Organizations with Giving, ChMS, and Financials (Accounting) - see 7:04
Before you begin: If you use our Giving Software, clear your sync report first. This ensures all online donations have successfully synced to your ChMS.
Database Cleanup
To ensure the accuracy of your Giving Statements, we recommend reviewing each of the following ChMS cleanup and maintenance steps.
- Find duplicate records.
- Export and remove inactive records.
- Handle deceased individuals appropriately.
- Manage records for divorced or separated families.
Pro-Tip: We suggest implementing some or all of the steps above as part of a monthly or quarterly database maintenance routine. Doing so helps ensure your people records stay up to date.
Consolidate Family Giving History
The Consolidate Family Giving tool displays a list of individuals whose giving is set to be grouped with the family, but still have past contributions associated with their individual profiles.
In other words, use this tool to ensure that no donation is missed on a family giving statement.
Check the Tax-Deductible Status of Your Funds
Verify each contribution fund’s tax-deductible setting. To do so:
- In the top-right, click the Gear icon
, then select Settings from the dropdown.
- Next, click the Giving tab, then select Giving Options and Categories.
- Review the Tax-Deductible column for each Giving Category (Fund).
- Click the Gear icon beside any Category to change its status.
For additional help with giving funds, check out this article.
Customize Your Giving Statements
Review your Giving Statement text, placeholders, logos, and more to ensure it is professional and donor-friendly. If needed, you can create multiple versions for different purposes.
More details on Customizing Giving Statements.
Pro Tip: You can include pledge statuses in your Giving Statements! Learn how!
Do a Practice Run of Your Giving Statements
Prior to printing or emailing all your statements, test to verify formatting, accuracy, or any missing details. A simple way to test is to print or email individual statements for just a few donors. Alternatively, create a temporary test group of 5-10 donors for a quick check.
Send Giving Statements
Follow the steps to print statements (and mailing labels) or email statements.
Express Gratitude
Send personalized thank-you emails to donors. Consider multiple channels: email, mail, or verbal acknowledgment during a service. You could use your ChMS to send mass emails, texts, or voice messages.
Request Feedback
Ask donors for feedback on their giving experience. You could use your Giving or ChMS form builder to create a short donor survey.
FAQs
Can the checklist be reused next year?
Yes. While some steps may be updated as features change, the overall process remains relevant for future years.
Do I need to complete every step?
Not necessarily. The checklist is comprehensive, but you can focus on the items that apply to your organization’s setup.
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