Please, Mister Postman, look and see.
Is there a letter (oh yeah) in your bag for me?
Letters have been a form of communication since ancient times, long before the Marvelettes, The Beatles, and The Carpenters sang about them.
Remember the rush and panic to get that letter, that birthday party invitation, pay a bill, send a thank you for that gift, into the ‘last post’? Being sent as a kid to drop those vital envelopes in a box at the bottom of the street, usually accompanied by scrabbling around in the kitchen drawer for stamps with minutes to go!
Letters are still a key way we engage with the world around us. Letters tell others we care, want to engage in conversations, need information, send information or simply get thanked.
So when, in December 2021, there was a need to reinvent mail merge functionality in Raiser’s Edge NXT by February 28th 2022, just 10 weeks away, with Christmas in the middle, we put up our hand!
The story…
Challenge accepted, we quickly realised we needed to reimagine what was possible rather than recreate the former way of doing it using a new platform.
We asked the question: “How do organisations create and send thank you’s and acknowledgements right in Raiser Edge NXT without the old tools, like Word or Google Docs, simply and easily?” (because making things simple is what we love to do!)
And landed with one simple idea: it was all about creating and sending…LETTERS (without the mad dash to the post box, of course!!!)
Letter Box was born.
We rolled up our sleeves and got building. Letter Box was designed to be 100% contained within RE NXT with no need for external apps. A tool to pull in the rich data organisations already had right in NXT to create beautiful personalised letters and acknowledgements. It has a full-featured template editor built right inside the app, simple tiles for Constituents and Gifts to create and send acknowledgements letters, plus a bulk letters tool to send those letters out to an entire list of constituents. And just recently, we added Conditional Templates, meaning you could use multiple templates with different conditions — all within one bulk run!
Many of you know the full story, but check out our session Letter Box — How to Build & Release an App in 10 Weeks (with Christmas in the Middle)! from the Blackbaud Developers Conference back in June and some of the lessons learnt!
But did it work?
What does the success story look like for the Letter Box and the organisations it was built for?
- The app was connected by more organisations than all our other apps combined in just three months
- More than 30,000 personalized letters have been created since it was released
- 90% + of organisations are enjoying the benefits of the Free Forever plan, meaning they get an awesome innovation for FREE!
But more importantly, here are a couple of the stories from you on how you’ve been able to create and send letters from within Raiser’s Edge NXT in an innovative way!
Uttam from Catherine Hamlin told us when we caught up with him at the FIA conference that not only has Letter Box helped the team, his CEO can now easily jump in on the phone and send an acknowledgement himself, something he couldn’t do before!
Uttam said, “I got to use the Letter Box plugin first-hand since Rabin left, and we had 100s of receipts to send out both mail and email.”
Some of his highlights are:
- A pdf copy is attached to the gift record, which can easily be re-printed or saved and attached in an email by anyone in the organisation without any NXT training.
- It is very clear with the two choices available; Download for printing Vs Email for sending
- Clearly flags any exceptions so they can be actioned separately
- The integration provides seamless UX
- Time-saving is enormous compared to merging outside of RE and emailing from outside of RE. Letter Box provides the same speed as how RE was when integrated with Office
“Letter Box has been a lifesaver. :) ” said Uttam!
Ninna told us if they hadn’t found Letter Box,
…I wouldn’t have learned about the amazing capabilities that Letter Box has to offer. Although we’re using the free option, it is proving itself as a worthwhile and time-saving investment. We have a staff member that routinely creates her letters from scratch and enters her actions one at a time, which takes up most, if not her entire work day.”
And another team member mentioned that Letter Box had “cut her work in half!”
Now the rest of the team wants to utilise Letter Box as well, and there is so much interest they are exploring the Premium Version. Ninna said, “I’m excited to get my hands on” the Premium plan of Letter Box!
Aaron told us,
“Ever since Blackbaud ended support with Microsoft in RE classic view, we’ve been looking for an option to merge letters more efficiently. Red Arc’s Letter Box has filled that void and made it a simple transition. No coding knowledge required and their support has been great.”
We must also give a huge shout-out to the team at Blackbaud Asia Pacific, Kevin Sher and Greg Simmonds, who have created and enabled a culture of innovation within the Blackbaud Partner ecosystem that enabled us to jump into this project!
Plus, an even bigger shout out to all the amazing organisations we’ve had the privilege of working with who were so helpful and patient as we built out features, fixed bugs and prioritised their requests for new features.
It literally was a team effort!! We’re super excited to be part of a partner system that is flourishing in innovation!
But most importantly, Letter Box is helping Raiser’s Edge NXT users do more good by making their life a little bit easier with a simple but innovative tool to help with donor care, retention and engagement!
We all love a letter, especially if it’s got good news in it!!
Want to find out more about Letter Box? Check it out here.