Using export for RG welcome letters - marking constituents as mailed

Debbie - · December 2015

For our recurring gifts, we send a welcome letter when a new RG is set up.

Previously we've been doing this under Mail->Donor Acknowledgement Letters, however the limitation in field availability (particiluarly installment schedule) has lead me to move the RG welcome letters to Exports as a Word merge.

My issue now is while I have the fields I need, there's no flag in the system that these people have been mailed (where under Donor Acknowledgement Letters it flagged as acknowledged).

A global action on the records using the same query used to pull the mailing data would be the best solution, however there's no way to add a template for Global Add such as under Global Change. Currently I've set up a default action that I'm using with Global Add, but it still needs to be set up and configured each run and this leaves the procedure open for error if I am on leave or unavailable to do the letter run.

Is there any way of adding an action when doing an export to flag the constituent has been involved in an export, or any suggestions on how to simplify the procedure?

Christine Cooke 2 · December 2015

You can set up a Global Change that is to Add Acknowledged and the Ack Date to the record. You load the query and add it. So then the only "error" that could happen would be loading the wrong gift query, but then if those records were already marked or didn't have a gift there would be nothing to add to.

JoAnn Strommen · December 2015

Debbie,

I'm a bit puzzled. I use Mail > Donor Acknowledgement letters for our new recurring gifts. What fields are you not able to pull that you need? Sometimes it's a matter of what name is used (ex: frequency is listed as gift frequency).

And I've also used Global Change to mark gifts as acknowledged. You will need a gift query of the gifts. Use global change, not global add - I know you're 'adding' info but you're actually changing it, too. Under global change, go to gifts, acknowledge - add - acknowledged. Works pretty smoothly.

Debbie - · December 2015

The field «Gf_Instalment_schedule» which when used in Export for a letter displays as "Transactions due on the 3rd Thursday of every month". This full text populates into the letter via Export when using this field. This field does not seem to exist in Donor Ackn letters.

Prior to that the previous RE consultant my org used set up Gift Attributes on each RG which were 1) gift schedule (3rd or 1st Thursday) and 2) annual amount which were used as merge fields. We are in the process of fixing the letters as the old sytem relied on these attributes being recorded on each and every new recurring gift, and to be modified on each and every change which is time intensive.

Is there a way to pull the annual amount of a RG out of RE without having to do a calculation merge field in Word or do manual calcs in an attribute?

Using export for RG welcome letters - marking constituents as mailed

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