Need help creating a mailing list that contains outputs from the RE Fund record

Andrea Phelps

This has always been a challenge and I hoping someone knows a trick that can help.  I need to pull a mailing list for constituents that are linked to fund records.  More specifically, I need to create separate lists based on an attribute in the fund record.  The fund attributes are not available in a constituent query and the constituent contact information is not available in a fund query.  I have discovered that I can include fund attributes as an output in an RE Constituent Export, which is helpful.  However, the export automatically de-dupes the list.  In this case, I do not want the list de-duped, rather I need to have a line for each fund the constituent is related to.  Any ideas?  Is there a way to tell the export not to de-dupe?  

John Heizer

I assume when you say "linked to fund records"  you mean there is a Fund Relationship on the Constituent record?  That sounds like it would be a Fund Relationship Export, which doesn't exist, only an Individual Relationship Export.  But would you really send more than one letter to an Individual had multiple Fund Relationships, which is what would happen if you output "a line for each fund the constituent is related to," but you have to select the specific Funds rather than being able to use the Attributes.


A Constituent Export will let you Export multiple Fund Relationships for each Constituent, you just have to specify a maximum number of Funds for each Constituent (or do the Export to Access which would allow the needed one-to-many connections needed and you could connect that data to a separate Fund Export that would let you get at the Attributes you need).

Andrea Phelps

John Heizer:

I assume when you say "linked to fund records"  you mean there is a Fund Relationship on the Constituent record?  That sounds like it would be a Fund Relationship Export, which doesn't exist, only an Individual Relationship Export.  But would you really send more than one letter to an Individual had multiple Fund Relationships, which is what would happen if you output "a line for each fund the constituent is related to," but you have to select the specific Funds rather than being able to use the Attributes.


A Constituent Export will let you Export multiple Fund Relationships for each Constituent, you just have to specify a maximum number of Funds for each Constituent (or do the Export to Access which would allow the needed one-to-many connections needed and you could connect that data to a separate Fund Export that would let you get at the Attributes you need).

John,

Thank you for your response.  Yes, in this case for this particular mailing we actually do want to send multiple letters because the topic of the communication is fund-specific.  The maximum funds for each constituent is certainly an option, but I think I would still need to manipulate the output since my experience has been it exports in the same row.  I may give the Access export a try.

Patricia Lewis

John,

We generate a similar Letters annually to our donor reps to provide fund balance information.  This requires data from the RE Fund and Constituent tables and also data from our Financial System (Banner).  Prior to moving to the hosted environment our IT developer was able to log directly into the server and run SQL statements to join the data from both tables together to create one output file that he would then link to the financial data.  Now that we are on the hosted environment, he no longer has the ability to directly access the tables in the database and he must manually merge the data from each file together (very labor intensive).  I have been working with Blackbaud but they do not have a solution.  I have been told they are working on a solution and it will be available in NXT in the future.  We have not upgraded and probably won't for a while.  If you are not hosted, this may help.


Patty Lewis

Director, Advancement Services

Sam Houston State University

Susan Ross

Hi Andrea -- Susan here from Blackbaud :-)


I'm sorry getting the correct mailing list has been a challenge for you!


I am not exactly sure this will work based on your description of what you are trying to do -- but -- have you tried a GIFT export?  I'm thinking that in a Gift export you can access constituent contact information AND the fund attribute.


The only issue with this one I can think of is that if someone gave several gifts to the same fund, you might get duplicates (a Gift export will give you a separate line in excel for each gift) but it might get you closer to want you want than any of the other options you have tried.


Let me know if that works!  Otherwise, I can keep thinking :-)


Thank you,

Susan

Gina Gerhard

Blackbaud created a plug-in to try to meet the need to produce a mailing based on fund relationship data -- it wasn't quite robust enough for our needs so I never really used it, but it does exist.  It's called the 'Fund Relationship Export' plug-in.


I think you can contact your rep or perhaps ask via Chat about this plug-in. If you're lucky, maybe it will solve your issue with producing a mailing coming from the fund data.