Ken, in our case this is not a logged in donor. We have not turned on the log in feature on our forms. So it must be that the de-duplicate process matched this donor to an existing record, and that record had a different primary email address, so the auto-responder was sent to that email address rather than the one the donor entered into the form (which is on the record as the secondary email address). The donor was confused by this and emailed us about it.

Checked internally about this and I understand it better. Apparently this happens when a constituent is logged in (which is best practice) and make a donation and their email addresses differ from donation form to constituent record they are logged in as. Not sure if it happens under other circumstances but will keep asking around. I'll change this status to reflect open issue. Thanks for both of your responses! 

I fully agree with this idea. It is a poor experience for the donor to have an auto-responder go to any email address other than the one they entered into the donation form. I've created a similar idea for this before I came across this post: https://luminateonline.ideas.aha.io/ideas/LUM-I-1506

Hi Ken,

I don't have a specific transaction to refer you to, but I will layout the whole hypothetical as I understand it.

Joe Smith makes one donation to my organization each year. On Dec 30, 2017, he makes a year end donation with the email address Joe.Smith@aol.com. That email address is then listed as his primary email address on Raiser Edge. At some point in 2018, Joe Smith decides to stop using AOL email address and switches to Gmail. On Dec 30, 2018, he makes a year end donation to my organization and uses the new email address, Joe.Smith@gmail.com. Our data entry staff are alerted to the change in email and update it on his RE account. However, the auto-responder has already been sent to Joe's AOL account, which he no longer uses. Therefore, he never sees an email thank you for the donation he made, which makes us look bad.

It seems odd to me that a donor is asked to provide their email address, but that field is not used to determine where the auto-responder is sent. If I was making a donation, I would expect to receive the gift confirmation at the address I submitted with that specific donation.

Hi, do you mean the donation is attributed to the record the old email address is associated with or that when they make a new donation and put in a new email address that email doesn't get the auto responder? If so I'm not sure that is intended functionality and I'll have to follow up with support to see if there is a bug. If you have a specific donation to an email where you knew this happened that would help me track down the problem as well. 

Thanks,

Ken