The User's Edge
The Official Blog of The Raiser's Edge

Let RE Total Your Gifts for you! - Making the Most of Summary Filters

Sometimes you might be asked to group specific constituents - or further filter out specific constituents - based on certain criteria. This is when our old friend Query comes into play! While I understand that query can be a love/hate relationship Big Smile, I want to share with you a way to turn query into your friend!

Some examples to consider:

1. Your Board Member asks for a group of the records that have given over $1000 in 2008. Simple, right? Stick out tongue Just filter on Gift Amount greater than or equal to $1000 AND Gift Date between 01/01/2008 - 12/31/2008. The only problem is, this query is actually looking at individual gifts, so it's not an actual SUMMARY of the values and isn't considering cumulative giving. For this purpose, you can use Summary Filters to query on constituents' total giving within a date range.

2. Another example of this might be that you wish to locate all of your donors who gave a gift to the 2008 Annual Fund or to locate the constituents who have not yet given to the 2008 Annual Fund. The Summary filters will provide these options (BB461900).

3. You want to locate constituents who gave 4 out of 5 years.

* NOTE: The key here is to effectively use the Summary filter subfilters as a 'query within your query' to group the gifts to be considered in your Summary calculations For instance, you may need to add a subfilter for gift date, fund, etc. *

Some considerations:

- To avoid double-counting, there are default gift types included in the Summary calculations.
- Outputting individual gift fields on the Output tab will likely result in duplicate rows. For this purpose, you can Export Summary Information.
- Because the criteria are based on the constituent record, you can only query on summary information in constituent, individual, and organization queries.

You can use Summary Filters for total number of gifts, consecutive years giving, and totals for Honor/Memorial records, amongst others! Once you've grouped these records in query, you're good to go with other areas of the program like Reports or Export. The summary option will give you many more options that may not otherwise be available using some of our Analytical reports (e.g., Non-Contributors, LYBUNT, SYBUNT, etc). As always, let me know if you have questions!

Posted: Jun 05 2008, 11:42 AM by Katy McGinnis | with 3 comment(s)
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Comments

Maggie Mills said:

I find summary capabilities very useful; however, although I can query cumulative years of giving, it does not seem to be included in summary information for exporting.  Am I missing something?

# August 19, 2008 7:38 PM

Katy McGinnis said:

Maggie, I have created a case for this inquiry and one of my colleagues will be in touch with you shortly!

In short, it is a different process...

# August 20, 2008 4:39 PM

Sarah McBride said:

In response to Maggie's question, constituents' cumulative giving can also be exported. Within a constituent export, on the Output tab, you can select Summary information, Gifts, Total Gift amount and then specify your criteria (e.g., date range, gift types, etc.)--see Knowledgebase solution BB201830. If you need to export constituents' cumulative giving multiple times (e.g., the total amount for 2006, 2007, etc.), refer to the first set of instructions in Knowledgebase solution BB14876. Hope this helps!

# August 29, 2008 8:40 AM