In our annual report, we have a section that lists the trust or estate gifts first received in that year over $1,000.  I have used a query that has worked up to this year.  I used the "first gift" as part of my criteria, it is not including one of the donors.  I have it pulling based on the fund that all of our trust/estate gifts are applied to but it still isn't working.  Does anyone have any ideas?

Example:  John Doe was a donor over the last 3 years.  He passed away last year and as a result, we received a trust gift from his estate.  Because this isn't his "first" gift, it isn't pulling him. 

Thanks,

Staci

It sounds as if your query is written to only get first time donors who gave $1000+ in their first gift but maybe you really want any donor who gave you $1000+ for the first time.  That second query is actyually not very easy to get.  You may need to use outside resources - can you or someone in your office write queries in SQL?

Either that or you should not use first gift at all in your query criteria.  Do they only get listed the first time they give $1,000+ or can they be listed agina next year if they give via their trust.

When entering estate gifts do you use any change in gift type, or fund or appeal? perhaps you can ask query on someting other than just amount.  We use gift subtype of planned gift and can query on that.

There isn't anyone here who can write queries in SQL.  I am the only one who does the queries/reports and that is way over my head!!!!

 They are only listed the first time we receive a total of $1,000 for a given year from their estate.  So...for my example before...when the person passed away last year, we received their estate gifts which was well over the threshold but because it wasn't their first gift to us it isn't pulling them; even though it was their first gift to that fund.  (I really hope this makes sense.

Sounds like you need to add the Fund ID as part of your criteria? And I would agree, you're not wanting their "first gift" ever (which is what the First Gift parameter searches for), but rather a first gift to a certain fund. I'm not sure you can query on that using a constituent query...

We handle this situation a couple of different ways depending on what the check says.

The first way is that we use an appeal called 'Bequest' meaning that it is a gift donated after the donor has passed.

The second would be that create a new rcord (organization record) called 'Estate of' or whatever is on the check and soft credit the deceased so their recognition salutation gets pulled properly into published donor lists.

The fund is always what the money is being donated to achieve (unrestricted, restricted for Cancer research, etc.) The fund is not dependant on any demographical information.

The Bequest appeal is also used for any excess monies received from an already booked planned gift when the check exceeds the present value.