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Handle Donor Communications and Preferences

Goal: Reach donors through the channels they've consented to, with the cadence they expect, and capture every touch so the next conversation builds on the last.

Communication preferences​

Each donor profile carries communication preferences:

  • Email receipts — accept transactional receipts via email
  • Email updates — accept newsletters and appeals via email
  • Postal mail — accept printed materials
  • Phone calls — accept solicitation calls

These flow into Communications: when you send a campaign appeal, donors who've turned off "email updates" are excluded automatically. Receipts respect the email-receipts toggle separately so a donor can still get tax-time receipts even if they've opted out of newsletters.

Communication tags​

Tags layer on top of preferences. Common patterns:

  • Major Gift — donors handled by your major-gift officer
  • Board — board members
  • Monthly Donor — active recurring donors
  • Sponsor — corporate sponsors
  • Event Audience — attendees of recent fundraising events

Tags drive segments in Communications. A "Holiday Match" appeal might target tag = Monthly Donor + tag = Major Gift, with custom messaging.

Acknowledgment preferences​

Separate from communication preferences:

  • Public — name appears in honor rolls, donor walls, annual reports
  • Private — not in public materials, but recognized internally
  • Anonymous — neither public nor named in internal materials beyond audit and tax requirements

Honor these consistently. A donor who's set Anonymous and sees their name in your annual report will (rightly) lose trust in the affiliate. Run a pre-publication audit on every donor wall and annual report against this field.

The interaction log​

The donor profile includes a notes/interaction log. Capture:

  • Visits and calls — date, who, summary, follow-up needed
  • Cultivation moves — proposal sent, gift discussed, outcome
  • Sensitive context — illness in the family, transition events

Notes are visible to staff with donor management access and persist permanently. Write professionally; assume they could be read.

Handling opt-outs​

When a donor unsubscribes from emails, Ayuna respects the unsubscribe automatically — the email-updates flag flips off and future bulk sends skip them.

When a donor explicitly says "stop contacting me at all":

  • Apply Do Not Solicit
  • Update communication preferences to off across the board
  • Note the conversation in the interaction log

When a donor passes away:

  • Apply Do Not Solicit
  • Capture the spouse / executor as a new contact if continuing the relationship is appropriate
  • Note the date and context

Cross-module communications​

Donors often touch other modules — they volunteer, they attend events, they sponsor. A unified picture of communications history is on the donor profile, which surfaces messages from receipts, campaigns, event invitations, and stewardship sends in one timeline.