Export Not Acknowledged Gifts

Kelly Schumann

I am trying to write an export where I can just select Unacknowledged gifts.

I made a query with just unacknowledged gifts. And now I've created an export using that query as the data set. But there's no way in the export module to filter by whether or not a gift is acknowledged. So I'm getting all gifts within a date range. That's the only filter that comes close to narrowing it down.

So if I select gifts within a date range and group it by donor (constituent export), I have to go through the exported spreadsheet and delete anything that's already been acknowledged. If I separate the gifts out, don't group them by donor (gift export), I have to manually remove the acknowledged gifts (much easier) but then either re-group them in excel or manually change the Word doc after merging. Both of these options make it so that running acknowledgment letters can take days.

What am I missing? I can't be the only person who needs to run ONLY unacknowledged gifts. Please share any insight! Thank you!

JoAnn Strommen

@Kelly Schumann Is the list you hope to receive to detailed complicated that using Mail doesn't work?

In database view Mail >Donor acknowledgement Letter will only pull the gifts marked as ‘not acknowledged’ into an export file. You can also create an output query. You can filter to certain records, gift dates, funds, etc. You can pull different groups if you want separate files for different letters instead of filtering your spreadsheet.

That would be my suggestion.

Christine Robertson 4

@Kelly Schumann To echo @JoAnn Strommen, I would use RE Mail if at all possible.

If you do a Gift Query and a Gift Export, you can easily filter to just the Not Acknowledged gifts.

Kelly Schumann

@JoAnn Strommen and @Christine Robertson Thank you for these answers, but I think I've done what you're suggesting.

If I do this, I want to pull one letter per donor which contains however many gifts they have given in a time period without acknowledgement. If I do that, I don't see how to pull the campaign and appeal information per gift. If I use one letter per gift, I'm having the same problem where I have to combine the gifts either in the resulting spreadsheet or in the Word docs. Does this make sense?

Basically, I want one line per donor with all the unacknowledged gifts for that one donor listed across the columns so I can do a straight mail merge without having to do a ton of clean up either in excel or word.

Kelly Schumann

Also, there are fields I need like Main Contact addressee and salutation that I can't seem to find when I try to pull from Mail. So I took it to Export thinking it had more functionality and a broader range of data available to me.

Kelly Schumann

@Christine Robertson If I do a Gift query, yes. If I do a Gift export, I will still have to combine multiple gifts from a single donor. So it still is a lot of work post-output. This is what I'm doing now. But I'm digging back in to see if there's a better way.

If I do a Gift query and a Const. export, that's when I get a single donor and every gift they've given in a time period, whether or not it's acknowledged.

JoAnn Strommen

@Kelly Schumann To get the contact add/sal you need to select them. I'd suggest a training on using Mail functions.

Yes, you may have to do a bunch of manual clean up as acknowledge is not a field that can be filtered on in Export.

One possible thought. So you have your gift query and now are working on a constituent export, for you export gift criteria have you tried a filter to the gift query? It might pull only the gifts you need. I'm not sure and don't have the time to test it right now. Select your query as one of the filters. Can't make it any worse. LOL

Kelly Schumann

@JoAnn Strommen AHA! This is the answer! When I filter by the query, it works! Thank you so much!

I do need a Mail training. I used to use RE about 10 years ago, switched to Salesforce and I'm now back and I haven't had to use it since. I'm extremely rusty!

Kelly Schumann

@JoAnn Strommen Also, just for clarification and in case you have any more ideas, I need to pull the addressee/salutation for the relationship main contact, like in the case of an Organization. That doesn't seem to be an option through Mail.

Christine Robertson 4

@Kelly Schumann You can pull Org Contacts in Mail - check the Organization Address tab.