Multiple Names and Suffix

Debra Watford

Hello All!  Just wanted some input on how others handle the following:

Donor letter contans From: Mary, David, Peter and Paul.....where do you put that info on RE?  I post to the funds to the name listed on check... however for tribute acknowledgements and annual report listing... how do I get these names in the letters? Attribures???


Also, I have been putting "and Family" in the suffix box, however have somewhat of an issue when doing invitations/mailings.  My suffix also include all the Jr., Sr., II. III...etc... but when I merge something.. I don't want to include the 'and family" suffix.  Suggestions would be great!


Thanks in advance! 

Joanne Felci 2

Debra,

I would edit the Addressee field for how you want it to print out and as long as you are using that field for letters, etc. it should work fine

Joanne

Debra Watford

I don’t really understand…. I need the Suffix
for all simply because of the Jr., Sr., etc…  however, I don’t
always want the “and Family”.  How do I make it chose?

 

Debra T.
Watford

Donor Relations Manager

McLeod Health Foundation

843-777-2974

 

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Jen Claudy

I think you have a couple of options.


There are 2 fields for Suffix on Bio 1, [Suffix 1] & [Suffix 2].  So you could put Jr, Sr, etc in [Suffix 1] and "and Family" in [Suffix 2].  Then adjust your Addr/Sal formats appropriately.


Depending on where you store your Donor Listing (or whatever you call the text that is printed when recognizing donors for their support), you can put the "and family" piece there and leave it off the Suffix list altogether (which I would recommend, because then there isn't a risk of printing "and family" on a mailing list, which you said you don't want).  If you keep your Donor Listing as an Additional Salutation, just select the most appropriate Salutation Format from the dropdown, click the [Editable] checkbox, and type in "and Family" at the end of the text.  If you keep your Donor Listings as an Attribute (which is what I personally prefer, because then I can use the same field for Org records), pick the most appropriate Salutation, check the [Editable] box, select & copy the text, uncheck the [Editable] box, go to Attributes, paste in the text as the Description for the appropriate Attribute, and add "and Family" to the end of it.  Sounds like a lot of steps, but it's pretty easy once you make it a habit.


To fix a lot of these at once, I would recommend using Import to export the data from RE (using the option to create an import file), clean up the data in Excel or whatever program you are most comfortable using, and import the data back to RE in the appropriate place.  Start with one test record (I recommend your own or creating a dummy record) until you work out a solid process, then after a full backup of RE is done (which should happen regularly, and does happen regularly if you are Hosted by Blackbaud), run your imports.

JoAnn Strommen

2nd question in your post:

Put your Jr/Sr/etc in suffix 1 field. For records when you need the "and family" enter that in suffix 2 field. For your addressee  and address block use addressee with format to pull suffix 1. For you salutation format to pull in the name and suffix 2 (Mrs. Jane Smith and family), I think you'd be able to get the desired result without having to make them editable.


1st question - where do you record your other tribute / donor recogition listing info?  I'd do it in the same place. I have an addressee format titled "Recognition-Annual campaign" where I select our joint informal addressee 95% of records. When they want family members listed, I make it editable and list names. Same can be achieved done using attributes if that's where you record that info.

Ryan Hyde

For tribute gifts and that sort of thing, which is where you typically see this sort of naming shenanigans, we have specific gift attributes that are meant to contain any donor specified variation in the TO and FROM fields. These attribute are automatically output in our tribute mailing and are color coded red. When we run our mail, we scan through the mail file once RE has output it and look for anything in red, and we manually replace the standard Addressee field with the red text, and then make the red text black, of course. 


It's a lot less complicated than trying to create custom addressee/salutaiton instances for each of these things, especially when this is only ever going to be needed for exactly one gift.


edit: we also batch HM gifts separately from other gifts and use a special batch template that includes the description field for the appropriate gift attributes.

Jill Freidmutter

Ryan, that's a really interesting way of solving this. We go through each thank you letter with the donation media and check for special notes like "This is also from ....", and manually change the saluations accordingly. I like your suggestion. How do you get the gift attribute to print in red? Is that done in Word merge?

Ryan Hyde

Are you using the mail module? Actually, I suppose it doesn't much matter if you're doing it via Mail or via an external merge as both processes are the same.


When you add the appropriate merge field (<<attr_desc1>> or whatever it is), just highlight that and turn it red. Then when you run your merge (or export you mail, same thing really) anything that pulls in to that <<attr_desc1>> field will be red.


We do this with the reference field for basically all of our thank-you letters. We plot the <<reference>> field in at the end of the first paragraph, make it red, and then when we get done exporting the actual letters, we just scan for red and decide what to do with whatever shows up there. Sometimes it's adding a sentene, sometimes it's changing a name, sometimes it's changing an amount or a date or something. 

Christine Cooke 2

Debra Watford:

Hello All!  Just wanted some input on how others handle the following:

Donor letter contans From: Mary, David, Peter and Paul.....where do you put that info on RE?  I post to the funds to the name listed on check... however for tribute acknowledgements and annual report listing... how do I get these names in the letters? Attribures???


Also, I have been putting "and Family" in the suffix box, however have somewhat of an issue when doing invitations/mailings.  My suffix also include all the Jr., Sr., II. III...etc... but when I merge something.. I don't want to include the 'and family" suffix.  Suggestions would be great!


Thanks in advance! 

So -- I guess the first question that comes to mind is are Mary, David Peter and Paul siblings?  married couple and children?  Is the one record supposed to be representing all four of them? or just one of them and they want all four names acknowledged.and published in tributes lists?


If these are four separate sibs, they should really have their own record.  Whoever wrote the check should have a hard credit for the gift and the others should be soft-credited. 

If this is one person making a gift in tribute (IMO or IHO) of someone and you want the thank you to go to the whole family, and you do not have the tribute module (sounds like you do not) then the gift should hard credit to the person who wrote the check and the others can be listed in a Gift Attribute that then has the ability to be merged into an Ack letter.


And for both I would have change and/or add a Addressee for "Family" situations.  And do the same for publication names.  I have a configuration in my Addressee/Salutations that is The Smith Family and The Smith Jones Family titled Household Addressee.  The Primary Addressee is always formatted for just the person (or persons if it is a couple) that are on that record.


just my two cents.  Think about down the road -- when you are not there to explain things in 5 to 20 years... someone will have to decipher how these records are kept.