Workaround for Conditional mail merge "between" operator

Katya d'Angelo

We are going to a new process for our donor acknowledgements. We have a membership system so anyone that donates under 50 receives an individual membership, those that are 50-64 get a Dual, 65-99 - Family, and so on. I'd like for our letters to say consittuent name and membership level, but since Microsoft doesn't allow the "between" operator I can't use that to set up different letters based on a range. Has anyone developed a way around this to do a similar set up? I've only been using RE for 6 months so perhaps there's something I don't know or am not thinking about. Thanks!

Alan French

I don't really do much mail merging but I would guess that the order of the conditions is important (there are up and down arrows next to them!) so once the record meets one of the conditions, it will not be evaluated against the rest of them.



If you list all of your conditions in order from smallest to largest, you could use "less than" rather than "between" and just use the lower end of the next range, e.g.:

• if amount less than 50 then "Individual" letter
• if amount less than 65 then "Dual" letter
• if amount less than 100 then "Family" letter etc.

Robert Flynn

>= or <=  Greater than or equal to OR Less than or equal to is more precise and can be used in the Word merge document to insert the appropriate text based upon the numberic value exported.

Steve Walsh 3

Can you export the "membership category" instead?  That way you don't have to worry about <between> and can use <equal to> the "membership category".



Steve Walsh

Jennifer McHale

If all you need is the constituent name and the membership level (without other specifics), could you simply add the membership level as an attribute to the gift record? This way you could pull a merge field thanking the person for their "donation of $x, as a {attribute} member."

It's one more item to add in data entry, but it might be simpler.

Nicole S

Are you using the membership module at all?  I used to create a similar letter.  We linked gifts to memberships and pulled in the membership level as a merge field.  YOu could also do this with an attribute.

Katya d'Angelo

Thank you everyone! This has been hugely helpful. I will definitely try some of these suggestions. Happy Holidays!

Katherine Mannion

We use "letter" as the conditional field, and our gift processor chooses the specific letter in the batch.

 

Gracie Schild

We use the Membership module, so we simply pull the level into the letter.  We got around all our problems by creating 2 letters - one for a membership (Individual, National Individual, Student/Teacher) where everything is in the singular ("your entrance pass is...") and one for all memberships Family/Dual and above, where everything is in the plural ("your entrance passes are..."). The gift amount is in the tax blurb at the bottom and doesn't go into the text at all, only the level and expiration date.  


If you aren't using the Membership module, you can definitely do an attribute with the level as the table description.  I have several attributes that are included in my master batches so that I'm sure they get created on the appropriate gifts.  Then the various letters are available in the batch to choose from and the batch is run through either the regular or the membership "Master Ack Letter" in Mail, each of which is a conditional merge with the multiple letters.  I really don't do anything with Word's merge functions - I create the letters in Mail in RE (using Word, of course) but using fields from RE to do all the work in a standardized letter.  The only "field" I use from Word is the date!