Annual Renewal Ask Letters

Hello all!

I have been out of the scene for 4.5 years enjoying retirement until I got called back to fill in temporarily until a new assistant can be hired. I am tasking my brain trying to remember why some things were set up the way they were. But now that I have stepped away from it, I am back looking at it and thinking there has to be an easier way.

I am hoping someone has a really good set up going and wouldn't mind sharing. Here goes,

Renewal Letters to LYBUNT

Currently we run a query looking at gifts from May 2022 (example), we also include in the query their Last Gift information too. As a staff we look at those donors and decide who should or should not get a letter asking them to renew their May 2022 gift. So it's not necessarily everyone in the query.

Mail merges are done via Excel and Word. Additionally an EXTREMELY large spreadsheet was created to track who letters were sent to, who gave because of that letter, etc. My eyes are crossing looking at this spreadsheet.

An Action is done for those donors who are mailed a renewal letter.

If the donor gives in response to the ask letter, the gift is coded as follows:

Campaign: Annual Renewal

Appeal: 2023 Annual Renewal

I am having problems figuring out a more efficient way to track those who received an ask letter and those who gave because of that ask letter.

HELP! ? Thank you in advance.