Querying for Last Gift to Annual Campaign

Jennifer McHale:

Hello,

I'm struggling to come up with the best way to get this information - but I'm sure someone here will know it in an instant!

I'm pulling together some lists for our annual campaign. While doing this I am (of course) looking at historical gift giving in our database.

In our annual appeal, I want to ask for an increased gift. So, I need to extract previous giving to the annual campaign from Raiser's Edge so that we can calculate a suggested gift amount for this year.

The challenge I am having:

I can't use the Last Gift option in my output. For some of our donors, the last gift includes participation/tickets/auction items in a fundraising gala. 

So, I may need to look back at previous campaigns (but I don't know necessarily which year); I also want to be sure to include our event donors in the annual appeal solicitation. Even though they may not have given to a previous annual campaign, they are definitely prospects for this year.

I am trying to pull all donors within the past five years (using a date range on a constituent query), but include last annual gift in the output.

I'm guessing I am going about it all wrong - or may need to do some combination of queries / exports that I haven't wrapped my head around yet. Any ideas?

Thank you! 

Use Export.  When you pull over a field from the Last Gift section a Gift Criteria window will open.  Use the filters in there to only pull the last gift to your annual campaign using whatever field you track that with (campaign, fund, etc.).