Hello group,
We converted to RE from another system in May and this fall will manage our first direct mail appeal in RE. Previously, we would import key fields from our db into Access and manage our mailings there, giving us free reign to create the fields we needed for merging into the appeal letters and creating reports for solicitors. The field at the heart of my question today is the ask amount (in dollars) in the appeal letter, as in "this year, we ask that you renew your support of $100." I am trying to determine the best way to track this for merging into appeal letters and keeping historical records.
If I can jump on my soapbox for a minute: In an ideal world, I would be able to attach the ask amount and solicitor to the appeal entry itself. I know I can put these in the comments field, but really need each value in a dedicated field to make possible all possible merging, sorting, etc. that I anticipate we will want to do in the future. I also need to track other comments, so that's kinda out.
The apparent built in option for tracking ask amounts is through the solicitor assignments, but each new such assignment for a given constituent creates a new Assigned Solicitor entry on the constituents relationship tab. That seems like a strange artifact of tracking ask amounts and like it will lead to crowded and confusing relationship windows.
Other options are tracking the ask amounts as an attribute or on one of the unused fields in the appeal entry. We could also use the Target field on the Bio2 tab, but it's not ideal for keeping a record of the ask amounts over time.
Just wondering if anyone else has a solution for this problem that works well.
Many thanks for any feedback,
Jenn
Our "direct mail" efforts are small, since our org isn't membership based, so I've gotten by with using the Assigned Appeal Comments field for recording the Ask Amount = $X. I Import that into the Assigned Appeal area along with the other data after we send an Appeal.
For mail merging I usually Export an Excel File containing all the merge fields, including last Gift Amount & then either manually enter an Ask Amount, or I have sometimes used Export to create a "suggested" amount.
Here's the BB Solution that describes how to export an ask amount based on a percentage of the last gift: