Oddball Question

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Greetings! I have an odd question, and maybe one of you gurus has an answer. I have a donor who gives a set level each year, and does not want to be solicited past that. No problem! However, it's important they still receive the letters (we're usually talking one or two extras a year) for various reasons. Is there a way to flag their name when I export my list? We want to include a personal note with the letter, so they know we're sending it for info, and not as an ask. I have no idea how to even phrase this as a search in the help sections. Am I nuts? Is this a pipe dream? Thank you all if you can help!!

Comments

  • Depending on how you use some RE features I can think of a few good places to put this, you can and probably should make an annotation, however if these are widely used they may be difficult to sift through on an export, or this might make more sense to create a note type of "solicitation requests" and put the request in the details and add that to your export file to review before sending your mailings off to print.


    There are so many potential places and depending on how your organization uses various fields there may not be a one size fits all answer, but best of luck!

  • You could give these donors a specific solicit code.

    If you use MAIL to export your list then you are limited to the available fields. You can filter by solicit code, but you can't include the solicit code field to be exported.

    If you use EXPORT you can export the solicit code with the list, which would be your "flag".

    Hope this helps.;-)


       


     
  • Suzanne Sippel:

    Greetings! I have an odd question, and maybe one of you gurus has an answer. I have a donor who gives a set level each year, and does not want to be solicited past that. No problem! However, it's important they still receive the letters (we're usually talking one or two extras a year) for various reasons. Is there a way to flag their name when I export my list? We want to include a personal note with the letter, so they know we're sending it for info, and not as an ask. I have no idea how to even phrase this as a search in the help sections. Am I nuts? Is this a pipe dream? Thank you all if you can help!!

    The simplest solution would be to use a solicit code, and filter out those few records separately upon export.

  • Suzanne Sippel:

    Greetings! I have an odd question, and maybe one of you gurus has an answer. I have a donor who gives a set level each year, and does not want to be solicited past that. No problem! However, it's important they still receive the letters (we're usually talking one or two extras a year) for various reasons. Is there a way to flag their name when I export my list? We want to include a personal note with the letter, so they know we're sending it for info, and not as an ask. I have no idea how to even phrase this as a search in the help sections. Am I nuts? Is this a pipe dream? Thank you all if you can help!!
    Another Solicit Code vote here.  I have people who only want to receive our year end appeal, and using the solicit code to either exclude or include them in our mailings has worked perfectly.

  • I think solicit code or an attribute would be the best way
  • At my last org, we had a little different process. I had a "Mail Flag" attribute, with such comments as "pull for additional note on all appeals".I treated this as an additional step before any big appeal mailing (I had a similar "Recognition Flag" for people to include/exclude for public donor lists - "use her company name in donor lists"). Admittedly, there were only about 6 people on it, so I could easily check it. You can create a DO Mail and a DON'T Mail flag that might be more useful. That way, if a person has a "Do Not Solicit" Solicit Code but you still want to add them, you can use Query List to delete all the "Do Not Solicit" folks, then add the DO Mail group back in to the full list. And vice versa - they don't have a "Do Not Solicit" code, but you want to exclude them from certain mailings, so the "DON'T Mail" flag is applied after the list is otherwise complete.


    Gracie Schild

    Bluebird Business Solutions

    Santa Fe NM
  • Judy Spigarelli
    Judy Spigarelli Blackbaud Employee
    Ancient Membership 250 Likes 100 Comments Photogenic

    Suzanne Sippel:

    Greetings! I have an odd question, and maybe one of you gurus has an answer. I have a donor who gives a set level each year, and does not want to be solicited past that. No problem! However, it's important they still receive the letters (we're usually talking one or two extras a year) for various reasons. Is there a way to flag their name when I export my list? We want to include a personal note with the letter, so they know we're sending it for info, and not as an ask. I have no idea how to even phrase this as a search in the help sections. Am I nuts? Is this a pipe dream? Thank you all if you can help!!

    We used to use an attribute named "Special Mailing Info", but we've switched to using solicit codes.  I have one named "special request - see notes".

  • We have several donors in our system like that as well, and I use attributes to be sure I do or don't pull them in a query. Once I know if they're in there or not, I'll highlight them for special care.
  • Suzanne Sippel:

    Greetings! I have an odd question, and maybe one of you gurus has an answer. I have a donor who gives a set level each year, and does not want to be solicited past that. No problem! However, it's important they still receive the letters (we're usually talking one or two extras a year) for various reasons. Is there a way to flag their name when I export my list? We want to include a personal note with the letter, so they know we're sending it for info, and not as an ask. I have no idea how to even phrase this as a search in the help sections. Am I nuts? Is this a pipe dream? Thank you all if you can help!!

    Thanks for asking this, Suzanne! Right now, our director is doing a fantastic job by just knowing these off the top of her head...This has really helped! I definitely agree that solicit code would be easiest, because you can filter.

  • Suzanne Sippel:

    Greetings! I have an odd question, and maybe one of you gurus has an answer. I have a donor who gives a set level each year, and does not want to be solicited past that. No problem! However, it's important they still receive the letters (we're usually talking one or two extras a year) for various reasons. Is there a way to flag their name when I export my list? We want to include a personal note with the letter, so they know we're sending it for info, and not as an ask. I have no idea how to even phrase this as a search in the help sections. Am I nuts? Is this a pipe dream? Thank you all if you can help!!

    Hi Suzanne,


    We use an attribute called "Special Attention" for some of these types of donors.  We export that field out with the data, and just do a quick scan before finalizing the mailing list.  It helps us mark those records that people are just carrying around in their heads, and we can easily query  on them and update if necessary.


     

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