Informal vs. Formal Salutations

I think that a lot of it depends on your donor base and your organizational culture.  Most of the places I've worked with have preferred the formal, but, if you have a younger donor base and/or your staff has a different relationship with donors (schools - most donors are parents who are very connected, radio stations - you feel a connection to your station and your on-air personalities, etc.), then informal may be appropriate.  Overall, I think it's most important to be consistent and to use the add/sal formulas (I would say that you should almost NEVER use the Edit feature - it really makes it hard to update the fields).  Set up the fields the way that you want them in Config and then use Global Change to update the whole system.  It's a big task, but it'll be much better once it's over!!

I agree it all really depends on what your organizations culture.  We always use formal Salutations for Envelope addresses or address blocks.  We then tend to be less formal in addressing the letter.  It really all depends on the donor.  The best part is that in eTapistry you dont have to be standard accross the board.  You have these two fields on every persona and you can be formal with those you wish and informal with those your closer to.  

Everyone is right about it being dependent on the culture of your org, your donors, and the relationship you want to have.  But I also think it's a good idea to set up some alternates.  We use a more informal unless our donor says otherwise, because that's the preference of the CEO.  Some CEOs prefer formal.  But we also have an formal set up for when we want to use that.  We also have individual (for couples) and more personal salutations set up based on who is signing the letter.  Some people really prefer to use formal if they don't know the person and we want the signer to be comfortable.  For instance, we may use a more formal salutation with a more formal letter, like for a grant. 



Personally, I like to use formal and let the person signing the letter personalize with the first name in small mailings, and informal in large that won't be hand personalized.

We use both informal and formal salutations. It depends on who we are mailing to and who the letter or solicitation is coming from. For example, if a letter is coming from our ED or Development Director and is going to the Board of directors, we'll use an informal salutation. Solicitation letters that are going to members or donors will include a formal salutation. We have several different salutations set up in our database, again depending on the person and their constituencies, and we build our mailing lists to include the correct information.