Within Salsa CRM, there are many different kind of form letters you can set up and use for your constituents. Most commonly our clients will set up the following types of form letters:

Donation Thank you's
Donation Summary Letters(for end of year taxes)
Acknowledgement Letters(for donations that are in-honor or in-memory)
Membership Reminders or Renewals

With that in mind, we have created templates that already include the respective variables as well as different layouts based on what we have seen our clients set up for mail-merges.

Please see the links below to download and review the different form letters and their purposes.

Before getting started with the templates

With some of these templates, there are tables embedded to align your content along with images. With these templates, you will just want to update the filler content and images. Please refrain from adjusting the column width or row height as these have been set up to ensure consistency when printing from the CRM.

Templates for Form Letters

Name	Description
General Donation Thank you with Sidebar	Thank you letter with respective variables with a left column for Board of Directors
General Donation Thank you with header	Thank you letter with respective variables with a stock header image
Gift in Kind Thank you with sidebar	Thank you letter for an in kind donation with respective variables with a left column for Board of Directors
Gift in Kind Thank you with header	Thank you letter for an in kind donation with respective variables with a stock header image
Check Donation thank you with header	Thank you letter for a check donation with respective variables with a stock header
Check Donation thank you with sidebar	Thank you letter for a check donation with respective variables with a left column for Board of Directors
Summary Letter to print on letterhead no donation table	Summary letter content with only the 'total amount' variable and margins set to print on letter head
Summary Letter to print on letterhead with donation table	Summary letter content with donation table and margins set to print on letter head
Summary Letter with sidebar and no donation table	Summary letter content with the 'total amount' variable instead of the table with a left column for Board of Directors
Summary Letter for email content	A .txt document to be used for the 'email content' when creating an email summary letter

Best Practices

Before you begin, set your word processor options to Allow me to choose from all Word Processing options.
Do not modify the table in the Summary Letter and Receipt Word templates. You can change the font and the content of the column headers but you cannot remove any rows or columns.
Modify the predesigned letter content before you upload the template to Salsa CRM. They are compatible with Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.
Spouse giving histories cannot be combined into single summary letters or receipts. If spouses donate, each spouse will receive a letter. If spouses want to receive only one letter, they must have donated as "donor" and "co-donor", and your data entry policy must ensure that one spouse is always the donor and the other is always co-donor.
For standard donation letters, the {{Smart Addressee}} variable in the inside address contains the List As Name of the primary donor, or the combination of Contact Name and Organization Name for Organization contributions.
For summary letters, the {{Smart Addressee}} variable uses the List As Name of the most recent donation in the list of Individual donor gifts. So, if the most recent donation contains a donor and co-donor, both names will appear in the List As name.
The {{Smart Formal Salutation}} field, by default, contains the Title and Last Name of the donor(s). This field will default to the First Name if no Title is supplied.
The {{Smart Informal Salutation}} field contains the Nickname field of the donor(s) and will default to the First Name if no Nickname is supplied.
The {{Smart Address}} field contains the primary address of the primary donor.
Regarding the Contact Name field of an organization type constituent record...
- - Salsa CRM is able to parse Titles, First Names, and Last Names in most cases.
  - Salsa CRM cannot parse mIddle names or initials in that same field.
  - Everything after a comma would be ignored, like a job title.
    For example, Mr. William Gates, Director...
If you are emailing summary letters, the email content should always be in a text (TXT) format and the letter should be an attachment to the email, formatted as a Google Doc or Word document attachment converted to PDF.