2018 feature updates: Our year in review

It’s been another busy year at Little Green Light! Below we share a recap of the most significant feature updates we made in 2018. (Click on a feature in the list to jump to its description, then scroll up a little.)

• Tributes
• Preview 100 rows of data in the report you are building
• Customize the definition of your top 100 donors
• Select a default report template
• Smart-populate the parameters in your “Total giving” column based on your constituent search
• Consecutive years of giving automatically calculated for each constituent
• Gift history is a PDF report you can generate for constituents
• Attach a PDF version of your acknowledgment to your acknowledgment emails
• Search for constituents by custom gift fields
• Export related gifts
• View year-to-date donor retention data from the Dashboard
• Resubmit a failed recurring LGL form payment
• Add a “Type” to a list, favorite a list, and add a description to a list
• Deduplicate your constituent address data
• Set a phone number format
• Add quantity (in pounds) to an in-kind gift
• View your appeal data in columns
• View giving data by single-select custom gift fields, by year, and by primary steward

Tributes

We have revamped this feature to offer easier notification options and the ability to add tribute gifts without creating a constituent record for the honoree. The updated feature can be enabled in your account at any time.

Preview 100 rows of data in the report you are building

We’ve increased the number of rows we show in your report preview from 10 to 100. You can view this preview in any report that you are building in two ways, either by clicking the “Preview” step within the report builder or by clicking the “Quick Preview” button in the “Customize” step.

Customize the definition of your top 100 donors

Now you can configure how the top 100 donors in your account are defined. To configure this calculation, go to Settings > Subscription settings > Gift settings page, and make the updates you prefer.

Select a default report template

You can now designate a report template to be applied, by default, to any report you build in your account.

And if you create a new report template, you will then also have the option to name the new report template and save it as your default selection.

Smart-populate the parameters in your “Total giving” column based on your constituent search

Now, whenever you build a constituent report based on a simple search that contains giving fields and you choose to add the “Total giving (custom)” column to your report, a popup appears asking if you want to apply your search criteria as parameters for your “Total giving” column. This is a simple way to make sure your total giving column brings in the same giving data you identified in your search.

Consecutive years of giving automatically calculated for each constituent

Every donor now has a “consecutive years of giving” value in their constituent record, viewable within a widget on your account’s Dashboard and in the Giving Summary of each constituent record. This data can be searched on and exported into a column in a report.

You can edit the parameters for calculating this value on the Settings > Subscription settings > Gift settings page:

Read more about this feature in the Knowledge Base.

Gift history is a PDF report you can generate for constituents

It is now possible to generate a report based on the constituent giving history for multiple constituents by building a constituent report and selecting the “Constituent Giving Summary (PDF)” option from the Report Template dropdown menu.

Attach a PDF version of your acknowledgment to your acknowledgment emails

You can now attach a PDF version of your acknowledgment email to each of your outgoing acknowledgment emails. This is a handy way to deliver a more permanent copy of your acknowledgements.

Important note: It is not possible to attach a PDF copy of anything except for the acknowledgment email itself. No other PDF file can be attached to your acknowledgment email.

Turn this on in Settings > Subscription settings > Gift settings …

…and then check the “Include copy of email as PDF attachment” box from the “Email options” step of the email builder for your email acknowledgment:

Search for constituents by custom gift fields

You can now search for constituents by any gift that has a custom gift field assigned to it by clicking into the dropdown menu shown below and selecting the custom gift field:

Export related gifts

It is now possible to export related gifts. To see an example of how this works, please view how to export related gifts on soft credits.

View year-to-date donor retention data from the Dashboard

Resubmit a failed recurring LGL form payment

When a recurring donation fails, you now have the option to resubmit the payment from the submission summary in LGL Forms.

First navigate to the Donations/Payments > Received tab in your LGL Forms account and search for the recurring gift that failed. You can search on date, donor name, and whether the gift is unpaid and recurring:

Next update the person’s credit card, and then navigate to the incomplete payment submission to resubmit the payment.

If you first need to update the credit card details (for example, if a donor has provided you with a new card or new expiration date), you can do that by going to the details page in LGL Forms for the recurring gift submission and clicking the “Change Payment Info” button.

Add a “Type” to a list, favorite a list, and add a description to a list

You can now classify and describe your lists in new ways, making them easier to manage and use.

Classify your lists by “Type”: Add new list types by going to your Settings > Menu items > Other menu items > List menu items page and adding the types that you want to use:

Once you have added a list type, you can edit a list and assign the list type to it:

“Favorite” specific lists and make them “stick” to the top of all your lists by going to your List Manager page and clicking the star next to the list name:

Give your list a description by editing the list and completing the Description field

Deduplicate your constituent address data

Address deduplication cleans up duplicate addresses within the same constituent record.

This feature has the best results when you also turn on address verification, so that all your addresses get normalized and have the best chance of matching.

Set a phone number format

You can now format the phone numbers in your LGL account for the purposes of display within the application and for exporting.

This setting can be enabled from the Settings > Subscription settings > General page:

Add quantity (in pounds) to an in-kind gift

With the optional setting turned on, you can add a pound quantity to an in-kind gift. When you select the gift type of “In Kind”, the Quantity field appears, where you can enter the number of pounds.

View your appeal data in columns

You can now display (and export) your appeal data within sortable columns. The column view also allows the inclusion of any appeal-related field you have added to your appeal.

View giving data by single-select custom gift fields, by year, and by primary steward

We have added three new ways to view your fundraising data, by single-select custom gift field, by year (either calendar or fiscal), and by primary steward. You can access this data by going to the Fundraising tab and selecting the option from the View menu: