Does anyone keep track of who recv'd general mailings (ie newsletters) in a constituent's record? If so, were do you keep track of it? We are wondering if anyone has an alternative to putting it in actions.

Thanks!
Katie Kupiecki
Manager of Development Information Systems
Aquinas College

We do our newsletters as Appeals so that we can reserve actions for development work. It increases our number of appeals (we send 4 newsletters per year), but in the long run is better than using actions for 4 mailings per year.

Michelle Bruning
Mosaic Foundation
Omaha, NE

We also track through appeals. but I have a question? We have a lot of old time donors who I think save every envlope we send so any way when you have a active appeal out there and you get someone who sends in a old envelope what appeal do you credit? This has always been a problem her for us. Thanks for any Help Debbie Drummond Hanna Boys Center Database Manager Sonoma Calif, 95476 707 933 2540 [Email Removed]

It is the same way for us. We have an aged donor base and I've seen envelopes come in that we sent out years ago. We enter the gift appeal that is on the envelope that the gift is received in. If the appeal code on the envelope is old and inactive, then the appeal code on the gift is "unsolicited". I know this might skew our appeal statistics a bit, but it is the best we can do with so many different coded appeal envelopes out there (we put a coded envelope in our quarterly newsletter as well). Michelle Bruning [Email Removed]

Once we are outside the window of the direct mail piece (i.e. the letter drops on 1-1, we have established a 3 month window meaning it will probably prompt response for 12 weeks) we use a code that show it as a response to a mail piece but not within the window. (In our case RESPENV-MISC). However, I agree with you they have received a new mail piece and just grab the first envelope they come across. It would be nice if a window would pop up and say something like part of August 04 mailing. There are some workarounds I have used other places, but it would involve globally adding pledges as mail is dropped and selecting the "open" pledge when the donation comes in, then globally writing off outstanding pledges - not something I am currently doing. Just as a note, I had a donation come in the other day in an envelope that we could track back to the late 1980s. Donna Marie Foos Data Base Administrator American Red Cross of Southeastern Virginia 611 West Brambleton Avenue Norfolk, Virginia 23510 757.446.7382 [Email Removed]

We keep track of who receives mailings on the appeals tab in Constituent Mgmt. You can add the appeal through a query or manually, record by record.