Since the Export module will not export total amount given for the last year that a constituent gave gifts (this has been filed as a suggestion BB74416), how do others get around this? We are trying to send an appeal using the last gift amount in the last 5 years . For example, Joe Brown gave 2 gifts of $50 3 years ago so the letter would state "Thank you for your last gift of $100...". I've had to use the export feature within query in order to get this, but there are up to 5 duplicates per person. If anyone has a work around for this, I'd appreciate your help. Thanks very much, Barbara ===================== Barbara Schlichter St. Mark's School System Administrator 508/786-6288 508/786-4088 (Fax) [Email Removed]

I am confused. Do you want last gift or toal given in the last year they gave? If you are going to acknowledge them with "Thank you for your last gift of..." then all you need to export is the last gift field. Saying that their last gift amount was 100 and they only gave 50 in each gift is misleading and would confuse our donors. But if I still wanted that amount I would create a constituent export (not a gift export which is what gives you 5 lines per person) and export the total given in each year for the last 5 years. How to mail merge the most recent one would be complicated but could maybe be figured out. Melissa G. Melissa S. Graves Databse Administrator Planned Parenthood of Connecticut [Email Removed] 203-752-2804

I need to get the total given in the last year they gave. In our AF Director's mind the last gift IS the total last given, which we all know isn't true/correct! Being a school we have several donors who pay a portion of their pledge monthly so they would have several payments which we need totaled to show what they gave in any specified year. I ended up running it through query, exporting the total given in each of the last 5 years. I've been experimenting with New Donor Acknowledgment Letters via Mail, but haven't come up with the correct results yet! We have another appeal going out shortly and I was hoping to alleviate the tons of editing we had to do on this last batch. Thanks for your help. I'll keep experimenting. Barbara ===================== Barbara Schlichter St. Mark's School System Administrator 508/786-6288 508/786-4088 (Fax) [Email Removed]

Hi Barbara! Couldn't you have it add as you are in your export, summary total for each of the past 5 years a total of cash/pay-cash/stock/other/pay-other, etc (not pledge) for each of the years and export it to EXCEL along with the address information and salutation for your letter. You'd have columns with addressee, address line, city, state, zip, salutation, then SumTot1, SumTot2, SumTot3, SumTot4, etc. Create a formula that gives you the first dollar amount that is not blank (if F2 is blank then E2, if blank then D2, if blank then B2) The actual formula should look SOMETHING likes this: (I'm not an Excel wizard - maybe someone else knows Excel really well and could give you the totally correct formula) =IF(F2=0,E2)*IF(E2=0,D2)*IF(D2=0,C2)*IF(C2=0,B2)*IF(B2=0,B2) Then, copy that formula and paste special the value in another column and then you can delete the formula column. You can then use this Excel document as your mail merge datafile which would have your name, address, salutation, dollar amount. It's not as complicated as it sounds. It would probably save you a lot of time and you could even go as far back as the last 10 years of summary totals if you wanted.

Hi Heather, For whatever reason this didn't come through via email, good thing I went directly to the web forums! I did export from query the info. as you suggested and will experiment with the formulas you provided. I just found out there IS a way to get the total amount numberous times within the summary information via the Export module. The key is after you select the gift amount the first time and enter all the criteria, filters and gift types pertinent to the year, you have to close the + sign next to gifts on the output side, then select summary info., total gift amount, set the criteria for the next year, close the + sign again and continue for all years you want. Guess the knowledgebase solution wasn't correct in this instance. Thanks for the suggestions, Barbara ===================== Barbara Schlichter St. Mark's School System Administrator 508/786-6288 508/786-4088 (Fax) [Email Removed]