Your first week

The Today page shows four steps until each is done, along with the gifts waiting for a letter, any that are past your target, how many donors you have and what was given this year.

1. Review your letter wording

Open More → Letter settings. Enter your organization's name and EIN (it must look like 12-3456789), check the time zone, the threshold for a written acknowledgement (default $250) and how many days you allow to send one (default 14). Gift dates and "today" follow the time zone, which starts as America/New_York.

Read the starting letter and edit it into your own words. Coffer insists only that the letter keeps the donor's name, the amount, the gift date, your organization's name and the goods-or-services statement. The fields you can use are listed under the letter. The wording is a starting point, not tax advice: review it with your adviser.

Save. Coffer prepares no letters until a person has saved this page.

2. Bring in your donors

Move in a year of gifts from Stripe (Move in from Stripe), or add donors by hand on Donors (Donors and households).

3. Record who agreed to hear from you

Appeals only include donors whose latest answer for that channel is yes. Record consent from Donors or a donor's page (Consent).

4. Send your first acknowledgement letters

Prepare, approve and export the letters that are due, send them with your own mail or email, and record when they went out (Acknowledgement letters).

When all four are done the checklist disappears, and Today keeps showing what is waiting on a person.