14. Creating a Mailing List

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our webinar. This is one of our foundation series webinars called Creating a mailing list. Now the whole purpose of this webinar is to show you the four keys that you need to create successful mailing lists, to find the donors that you want, and to Read More

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our webinar. This is one of our foundation series webinars called Creating a mailing list. Now the whole purpose of this webinar is to show you the four keys that you need to create successful mailing lists, to find the donors that you want, and to record the records to indicate that those folks have been sent that particular mailing. So all of these tools that we’re going to share with you today are definitely tools that you can use when you’re doing a mail merge from DonorPerfect. Want to jump in and tell you who I am in just a moment, but I want you to be sure to use the chat feature to send your questions over. Your questions are very important, and we do value your questions. Your questions also help other users. So please feel free to send your questions over. I will do my very best to answer them for you, and I might even throw a couple of Donna love notes over your way. Okay, and those are just a little bit more information than we’re actually seeing or hearing. So let’s jump in and get started. My name is Donna Mitchell. I am a senior Training Specialist here at DonorPerfect. I just celebrated my ninth year in June. I love my job. I love what I do. I love you guys. I love my clients. I love the work that we do, and I love supporting the work that you all do. So I’m going to be hanging out with you this afternoon. And again, please feel free to send your questions over. This is really cool and casual, guys, I want you to enjoy yourself, ask questions and just go for it. There’s no wrong answers and there are no bad questions. So what we’re going to be talking about is direct mail today. Now, a lot of folks send out emails and all of that. We know the benefit of sending email quite, quite a few, right? We send email that costs less. We can get more people, we can have a broader reach, and all of that. But still, in today’s age of digital media, some think that email would be the logical method of communication, and in some cases it would be but the Mr. Benchmarks have uncovered some interesting results.

The response rates to emails can be as low as point zero, 5% meaning, for every 2000 mails that are emails that are sent, 100 would be opened.

That’s not so great, right? Not a great return. The study, a study conducted by the DMA, which is the direct that is the, Oh, lovely. I used to know what that was, Direct Marketing Association. I think that’s what it is. Show that direct mail has an open rate of 80% so you know how it is you get that mail. It’s junk mail, but you still look inside you want to see what’s going on.

So that open rate of 80% already supersedes the 100 or the point oh, 5% of emails that are sent.

Also, they found that 56% of those surveyed believed printed material instills the most trust in the soliciting organization. Now that’s just human nature, right? So sometimes we gotta roll with it. We gotta roll with it. And so having that printed material makes people think, Hey, this is legitimate. It’s not spam. It’s not, you know, something that you know someone is just sending and giving it to everybody. It this is something that somebody targeted to and for me.

So what we’re going to talk about today are the four keys for a successful mailing list, so the first a selection filter, right? It is very true that often, when you’re sending out your mailings, you don’t necessarily want the entire database, right, and the way you speak to a new donor, or a major donor, or a monthly donor, or a lapse donor, would be totally different, right? So we may want to segment our database and selection filters help us do that. We then want to create an export template. This allows us to create a data source for the merge fields that are in our mail merge letter template, which means we need a mail merge template. So the mail merge template is going to be a Word document that contains the merge fields of data to pull from the donor records into their letter and that personalized.

Is it right? And then we need to know the location in Donor Perfect, where we can a indicate the mailing code right, what mailing we’re sending and where to do our mail merge within DonorPerfect, and we are able to create a contact record so that everyone in that filter that’s getting that mailing is going to have a contact record, indicating that. What does that mean for you? That means you have a filterable field to find folks that got the mailing, and you’re going to be able to use that to see if they actually responded with a gift. All right, now the contents of this webinar may contain features and fields that are different than what you see in your database. If you have a question, please again, don’t hesitate to ask.

So when we are again, when we’re doing these mailings, we need to think about, first and foremost, who do we want to include? Who is the group of people, donors that we’re going to be reaching out to, maybe, and while we’re going through these, think about some of the segments that you would like to mail to. So you may want to send something to donors who have given consistently that you want to solicit for increased giving, right? So that could be something.

Maybe you have donors who have given to a specific cause, and you want to thank them and solicit it again for that same cause. You know they’re interested. You know that. And so maybe we, appeal to them, thank them, so they know that. We know they’re on the radar. They may give again.

Maybe we want to reach out to donors who have lapsed that you hope to reactivate. I know lapsed donors, that’s a big deal, right? If you have a lot of lapsed donors, you want to reactivate those folks, right? They already expressed interest in your organization, but they haven’t given recently, so we want to reactivate them.

It’s going to take you a little less work and less money to get those lap donors back, possibly right, as opposed to cultivating a brand new donor.

Maybe we want to reach out to major donors and ask and appeal to them for a larger amount of money.

Maybe we want to send a letter to our new, first time donors that you want to further Welcome to your organization. So this, these are different ways that you can do that. And if you have thoughts, please feel free to pop those in the chat, and we can see what everybody’s looking to do. If I haven’t welcomed you, welcome to the webinar. So glad to have you here today.

All right, so how do we do that? We have all of these different options. I’m going to look I want to reach out to my new first time donors, because I want to invite them to this event. I want them to see the work that we do. I want them to see how we reach out to the community and how the community supports the organization. So I’m going to look for those folks.

But in order to find them, I need to choose the records by using a filter. So we have three different filters, types of filters that you can use, one and the one you use most often is going to be a standard Selection Filter. Right. Standard selection filters allow you to create filters with multiple criteria that can be combined with an and or an or, okay, a compound filter allows us to create more complex filters, right? I want to see I can’t do an and and an or in the same filter, but I can build separate filters and bring them together that way. So I want to see this and this and this or that. I can use a compound filter to do that. Compound filters also allow me to subtract a set of criteria from another. Right? I want to see this and this and this, but I don’t want to see these.

Okay, and then, when you’re in reporting the sidebar, filtering is a great way to quickly set a filter to see the records that you want, but we’re going to do that so we need to know who we’re going to target. We’re going to target new, first time donors that we want to welcome further to the organization.

All right, now, what?

Going to do here, first is talk theory, and then at the end, we’re going to take all of these things and bring them together to show you how to create your mailing list and update those records.

So the first thing we need to do after we have determined these are the records that we want. We need to determine what information we’re including in the letter, right? And in order to get the merge fields of data in there, and to have them merge properly, we need an export template.

Export templates allow us to pull the fields of data that we want that we’re going to use in our letter. They’re going to be the columns of data that we see in Excel, right? And we’re going to access them, going to settings and export templates.

Export templates allow us to pull the fields of data that we want that we’re going to use in our letter. They’re going to be the columns of data that we see in Excel, right? And we’re going to access them, going to settings and export templates.

So export templates are really, really important.

When we get there, we’re going to show how to build the template. So actually, I’ve decided I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to create the filter. First, I’m going to show you how to create the export template. So we’ll do this each piece, and then we’ll bring everything together. So export templates, we’re going to name the template, and I’ll talk about some best practices. When we do that, we’re going to be sure that we’re pulling from the proper table, in our case, main bio, and we’re going to pull in all of the fields that we need to be data source for our mail merge.

Once we choose the fields that we want.

We can also choose how we want to sort the data that comes out in Excel. We’re going to select our fields, and then we’re going to save and close. So let’s jump into DonorPerfect.

There’s Donor Perfect, and we’re going to first create our filter. But before we do that, I want to go into this record, and you go to the last page when I go here. So this field may or may not be displaying, but yes, it is, actually it is. So on your gift screen, there is a field. It’s typically hidden. So your field may be hidden, but there is a field, it’s a yes, no check box called first gift, and this check box is checked automatically when a donor gives their first gift. Okay, we can use this in a filter to find those donors. So if I want to find all the donors whose first gift is in 2023 to 2024, I will find all those first time donors, and that will allow me to filter and pull out those records. So this first gift field is a wonderful field to filter by. I’m going to go to settings and filters.

I’m going to add a new filter. And when you create your filters, you may want to create folders to organize them, right? I’m going to add a new filter. 

I want to go to the gift pledge screen, and in my field list, you’re going to see different field names. Now the first gift field is not displayed by default. You can display all fields. And now we’re going to go look for the first gift field. I’m just going to type in fir and there’s my first gift. So you can type in the field list to get to the next field that you want.

So there’s first gift, and the options are, is checked yes or is not checked No. 

We want the Yes. We want to find all the records where the first gift is checked yes. So I’m going to add that first set of criteria, and then I’m going to do the date of gift.

I want the date of the gift to be. We can do this year. Let’s just do this year is between a 101 2024, and let’s just say 1231, 2024 so if I do this a little bit later, it’ll pick up folks that gave gifts their first gift after today, and I click on continue. So there are my two sets of criteria. First gift is in this date range, and that’s what I’m going to call it. First gift I’m. And see why. 2024 that’s what I’m naming it. Okay, I can go ahead and put it into my folder. I’m just going to stick it in there and click on Done. And now there’s my fold, my filter. Now, before we actually do this, I’m going to run a report to see who these folks are, because when you’re doing mail merge, and Donor Perfect for mailings and mail merge, if you’re doing it blindly, you’re not seeing the actual records. So we’re going to run a report first. All right, all right, so we have our filter. That’s number one. Number two is I want to create a I want to create actually. I should have done just one.

I just realized what I just did. I want to create an export template that includes the fields of data that I want now there is a field, I want to go to, Alfred’s record again, and there is a field here under where’s my event stuff, web link fields. Here it is. There’s a field here called meal choice. Now I didn’t update all of those records to say that, but we have their meal choice. If they’re in this, then that meal choice is going to show up in my letter. That’s what I want to show in my letter.

Okay, actually, you know what? I’m going to change my letter. I’m going to say you’re my first gift. 

Alright, I just changed my mind right in the middle of the webinar, but that’s okay. So any field that’s here can be included as a merge field, and that’s basically the point that I was trying to tell you. All right. So now we’re going to create our export template. I’m going to go to settings and export templates.

Now I want to create an export template that will contain the information that I want. So I’m going to create, did I create one already.

But nope, great. So I’m going to add a new template, and I’m going to call this I’m going to call this gala export template. Now, couple of best practices here. When you’re creating export templates, you want to name it something that identifies the criteria in here, right? So I can call this gala mailing export template, so I’m going to be using it for that. What I don’t want to do is say gala 2024 right? Because I can use this export template anytime I want, but we do want to indicate that it’s a mailing template, so that already tells me that I’m going to be using this for my gala mailing, and if it’s a mailing then I’m going to have my address fields in it. Easy peasy, right?

We’re going to choose the template type, since Mail Merge uses only fields from the main screen or the bio screen. We’re going to select main bio, we’re going to sort by last name, and we’re going to keep this shared with everyone. When I choose main bio, we’re going to sort by last name, and we’re going to keep this shared with everyone. When I choose main bio, the fields on the right are the fields that are selected by default.

Okay, so I have the donor ID, I have their name and address, optional line or direct field. Never get rid of that if I want to include additional data that I need to choose from the fields on the left that are available, I’m going to look for event, meal choice, and I’m going to choose initial gift date. So I want the initial gift date and amount as well, because I can include this in my information. For example, if Donna gave her first gift this year, but I’ve given a subsequent gift, it’s going to pull and say thank you for your first gift on this date for this amount.

Okay, now we want to keep an eye on the field names, and we’ll, we’ll come back to this. So those are my fields. I’m happy.

I’m going to click Save and Close, and now my event template is there, Gala, there it is. Okay. So that’s part number two. So we did the filter, we did the export template, pulling the data that we want. So.

Now we’re going to go on to step four. Step four is to create or update a mail merge template with the Donor Perfect fields that you want to pull into your letter. Okay, so we have sample Mail Merge templates in Donor Perfect already you can simply copy and paste those fields into your templates, and once we merge it, it’s going to merge the data into those fields.

Okay, all right, so let’s do that. I’m going to go back into Donor Perfect, and I’m going to go to settings and mail merge templates. So this is our mail merge template library. You have a bunch of templates in here, but what I want you to do is just get in there and have fun. Create your templates. You can do labels, you can do envelopes, you can do appeal letters. You can do receipts, thank you, letters and so on. I’m going to use this sample template here, and I’m going to download it.

Want to open this up, and we’re going to edit. Let me make this a little bit bigger, all right, so what you’ll see is I have all these merge fields in. So it’s going to merge in the address, block, the salutation, it’s going to merge in a different information.

So what I don’t have in here, I’m going to to be held. Sorry. I’m going to change that. Hold on one second.

All right, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to do this.

We appreciate your first gift on in the amount of, all right, so we’re going to do that.

We look forward to your continued support.

Okay? Fantastic. Now, Donna, what in the world is happening? Well, I want to pull in those merge fields so that it will pull in their first gift date and their first gift amount. How do I do that? I’m going to make this super easy. What we want to do is copy an existing merge field, like salutation.

Copy and I’m going to put it gift on. 

I’m going to paste it here. Now, when you’re pasting merge fields, you want to paste it without removing the formatting so that it is a proper merge field.

Hey, Donna, how do I know if it’s a proper merge field?

When you right click on it, you should have your right click menu, display, update field, edit field, toggle field codes. That’s how you know you have a proper merge field, but Donna, I don’t really want this to say on dear Donna, right? Donna. So what I’m going to do is right click on the field.

I’m going to select edit field, and we’re going to change the field name to the initial gift date. 

How do we find that out?

We go back to settings and export templates. We’re going to find our gala template, and I’m just going to click to open it. I’m going to go find my field, and it is the initial gift date. I’m just going to copy that.

That’s the field name.

Gonna go back into DonorPerfect and pop that right in there, and okay, and it updates the field. 

How cool is that? It’s awesome.

And now I’m going to copy this and place it next to the dollar sign, but we don’t want the initial gift date. We want the initial amount. 

And I’m going to right click this edit field, and it doesn’t matter if it’s upper or lower. Case. Doesn’t matter your meal, choice of event, meal. So that would bring in the code like SE for seafood, BF for beef. I want the.

Description. So if I ever want a coded field description, I’m going to right click on the field, edit field, and after it, type underscore, D, E, S C R, oops, R, D, E, S C R, and that will pull in the code description. 

Okay, so let’s do a Save As I’m going to do a Save As this is going to be. 

Want to put today’s date 827, 24 I’m and save. All right, all right.

Once we’ve done our template, now we’re going to go back to settings, Mail Merge templates, and we’re going to upload it new. Now I don’t need this one anymore, so I’m going to just say bye, bye, and now I’m going to upload new I’m going to browse my computer. This takes me right to my file explorer, and there’s my document. 

All right, and it’s going to be main bio, awesome. And now my template is in there.

Okay, all right, so we uploaded it, and there are additional pre made templates that we’ve created for you. So please feel free to go there, and I’ll show you where that is, at the bottom.

And if you go looking for pre made templates, this will take you into the DonorPerfect community, and it’s going to take you to the mail merge templates article. We have envelopes, we have letters, letters, we got letters, and we also have labels. So please feel free to come in here. Download what you need, and then you’re going to update it with your beautiful text, your logos and all that good stuff.

All right now we need to record who was included, right? So the best thing we can do, instead of going to all those records and saying creating a contact record to say that they received this document, this mailing. We can actually do this through mail merge and DonorPerfect. It is really cool. 

So what you want to do is you want to create a mailing code that’s on the contact screen to indicate the name of the mailing All right? And you can do it right here from the actual mail merge process. You can do it on the contact screen for the mailing Code field. You can also go to settings and code maintenance.

When we go here, we’re going to click on the check box that says update contact manager. 

I’m going to do an export that’ll export a file. We don’t even have to touch it, unless you want to give it to your mail house, and that’s going to create the contact record. Then we’re going to come back uncheck that, and then do the mail merge, and that’ll merge the data into the letters the uploaded Mail Merge templates that you have.

Okay, so we’re going to put it all together. 

Let’s jump back in. So Oh, I love the thumbs up, yay. All right, I love when people use that. So thank you for doing that. Now, the first thing I want to do, remember, I told you that, when you’re in mailings, mail merge and you set your filter, you’re doing it blindly. You don’t really see the records that you’re you’re going to be affecting. So what I recommend is to go into reports and the Report Center, I’m going to go to my listings folder, and I’m going to do a report called, I can do any one of these reports, really, I’m going to do this constituent summary.

So okay, I want to exclude no male names, right? I don’t want anybody in there that shouldn’t be mailed. And I’m going to apply my filter.

So remember, our filter was their first gift is in this calendar year.

Year, I click on done, I click on Run, and now I’m going to see how many and which donors are going to be included.

So there they are. You’ll see the address information. I see that they, most of these have one gift.

Now, some of these people have more than one gift, but somebody’s going to say, hey, Donna, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, David has 10 gifts, and Robert and Donna have two You said they gave their first gift this year. How come this person has 10 gifts? Well, guess what? It does not mean that they only gave one gift this year. It just means that their first gift was this year.

So if we go into David’s record, and I go to the gifts screen, here’s his Well, he’s a monthly donor, right? Makes sense that he has multiple gifts. If I go into his most recent gift, you’ll see that first gift field is not checked, but if I go to his first gift, which is right here, we will see that his first gift was in this calendar year.

Okay, so first the gift doesn’t mean only gift, alright? So we have, I’m going to go to the last page. 

We have 83 folks that are going to be updated here. Okay, so we’re going to do that now. I’m going to do some magic on my end. So bear with me. This is not part of the webinar, but I’m going to do something to make some magic happen.

And I’m going to just do a backup, because I want that field to display, and you’ll see what I mean. Create new backup. I’m going to back my system up.

I’m going to go to utilities. I’m going to go to global update. So what I’m doing is I’m globally updating those records to make sure that meal field is selected. So I’m updating the main bio, and I want the is it event meal, or is it meal? Meal choice? And believe it or not, I’m going to make everybody have seafood, and I’m going to set my filter those folks and continue.

All right, so I did that so that our merge template will look beautiful. All right, so let’s talk about what we did. So first of all, we created the filter, right? The first gift is this year, right? First gift and CY 24, we created an export template, that had the fields of data that we need, the initial gift, date and amount and the event, meal choice.

We created an Mail Merge template that had those merge fields in it. 

We uploaded it to DonorPerfect, and now we’re going to do our mail merge, but before we do that again, we can do multiple things. I want to go to actually a gift record, a contact record.

So see this mailing Code field.

This is the one that we want to put that mailing code in. So you can do it right from the contact screen. You can go to settings and code maintenance. You can even do it when you go to mail merge.

All right, beautifuls, let’s do it. So I’m going to go to mailings and mail merge.

Now you see my filters here. If it were not here, it would just look like this. So I’m going to click on Apply.

I’m going to go get my filter, and then we’re going to click on show more options.

So the address options, I know. Oh, Katie. Katie, don’t you love to have the codes on the record so you can just create your codes right there. It is so awesome. I love that they also added it here which it wasn’t before game changer for sure. All right, so under my address options, this gives me some options about which records I want to include or which addresses I want to who I want to mail. So we have our filter. We’re only mailing those folks include no mail addresses. So in this case, we don’t want this selected because we don’t want to mail people that should not be getting mail. Then it says, Do you want to send to the primary?

Address only to all addresses on the record. Or if this were a specific mailing type, folks, I would be able to do some targeted mailings from here, but I’m going to do primary address only send one mailing per household if you select that and there are multiple people in here with, let’s say there’s a couple in here and they have the same address. It’s going to go through some logic to pick the record that it wants. So it’s going to first look at the record that was most modified most recently. If that’s equal, it’s going to go to the record that was created most recently. And if those are the same, it’s going to go with the lower number, donor ID.

Use your seasonal dates. So on the alternate addresses screen, you have the ability to track seasonal dates. If you’re doing that and you’re doing a mailing, DonorPerfect will use the current date and check against all those seasonal addresses. If someone is has their seasonal dates in that range, they’re going to get it at their seasonal address.

So it’s really nice under set Mail Merge options, we want to choose the export template. So we did one specifically for this, right? Because it had the fields in it that we want. So we’re going to choose our gala mailing export template, and then under more options, you’ll notice we can export as a CSV, and we’re going to click on update contact manager.

Gotta click that and in my mailing Code field, we’re going to choose black tie and blue jeans invitation. 

Now hear me on this there is a little glitch in the system that we are working on. Normally, if you select these options and do an instant merge, it’s going to create the contact record with all the information. Currently, if we do that, the mailing code will not populate in the mailing Code field. So what I’m showing you is the way to work around this. So what we’re going to do is update the Contact Manager, select our mailing code and then click Export Mail Merge file.

When I click that, it’s going to export a file. You don’t even have to touch it, but it will create that contact record to indicate the mailing code.

Then you’re going to uncheck this box so we’re not going to update, but this time, we’re going to click on instant merge.

We’re going to grab our invitation, we’re going to use the data directly from DonorPerfect and merge.

And while that’s happening, we’re going to get our beautiful letters.

I’m opening that up in Word. So there you’ll see Bob has his his first gift on 722, in the amount of oops.

That might have been a, yeah, that might have been an in kind gift. Whoops.

But this one, you’ll see his first gift, and there’s the amount for the first gift, and you’ll notice the meal, choice of seafood has been noted, so it pulls in all that data for us, for all of those records.

But what happened to I should have seen one of those names. Oh, was ABC Company? ABC Company?

Oops, my filter on there, yeah, get rid of that.

This Bob Jones, this one here.

If I go to the contact screen, look at that, it creates the contact record to indicate that mailing code.

And so now you can use that field, hey, I want to see all the people that got the mailing Code, Black time, blue jeans, invite. And now I want to see people who gave a gift, if it’s an appeal letter, if it’s giving Tuesday your end of your appeal, you can use that to then do a report to see if people have responded. So you want to make that solicitation code the same thing. Isn’t that neat? So, so, so cool.

All right, so that’s one way to do your mail merge. Did it put it there twice? Okay?

Okay, so full disclosure, I was practicing earlier, it did not put it there twice. Okay, it did not I was playing around earlier, and I forgot to delete those so it only put it there once. Okay, thank you, Ashley for checking that out. I appreciate that. So, no, it did not create it twice. It just I did not delete the ones I was practicing on earlier. But now I’m going to show you something.

If I go to Reports and the Report Center and I use a report in the listings folder called export to file, guess what you can do a mail merge from here too.

So if I do main bio, right, because our fields are from main bio, there’s my filter. I don’t want to include no mail names, but I do want to update the contact manager. 

I’m going to use my gala template, and then I’m going to do my instant merge, so your address options are here, so we can choose the primary and all of that. What we can’t do on here is one mailing per household.

So that’s only in Mail Merge, but still not a huge deal.

And now. And the other cool thing about this is you can do a preview before you you export. So now I’m going to do my mail instant merge.

I’m going to use my invitation and merge.

So you can do it from here as well. And yes, it does update the record. Let’s see if it did it with the so it actually does do it with the so if you do it from the export to file the mailing code, you just have to do it the once, and it will merge and add the mailing code. So it’s only in mailings Mail Merge where there’s that little glitch.

Okay, all right, so let’s recap, and then open the floor for questions. So targeted lists are achieved with selection filters. Keep in mind every field is filterable, and you can segment your database and find the records that you want to do your mailing to you. Your export templates are the columns of data in Excel and serve as your data source to pull those data fields into the mail merge fields.

Your mail merge templates are those beautiful letters that you’re sending with the merge fields, and that will personalize your letters, and then you have the ability to update the contact record for all the folks that you’re mailing to by indicating the mailing code that was sent to them.

Questions, yeah, I know y’all have questions, so somebody’s got to ask a question.

Anybody question?

All right, well, I sure hope that if you’re doing a mailing soon, that you use this option. One, I have a couple of love notes.

One, if you want to practice, first, practice on one record like use a donor ID as your filter, and then practice, so you can see how it works. That’s number one. Number two, before you do a mailing, make sure you dedupe your system merge your duplicates because you don’t want to send multiple letters to the same person, right? Just because they happen to have separate, separate ones, separate records, and you absolutely want to do deduping before your end of your tax letters. Alright, make sure you’re doing that. Maria has a question I have to practice, and then we’ll probably have a lot of questions.

Well, we have this memories and recorded. Yes, this has been recorded. There’s also a recorded one of this webinar in the on demand webinars that you can access from DonorPerfect, but I believe you’re going to get a copy of this. You’ll get an email with this recording coming out to you if you want to check it out before then if you jump into DonorPerfect and go to help and on demand webinars, you’re going to go to the first foundation series and just arrow or scroll through this list, and it is number 13, creating a mailing list so you can watch this on demand whenever you want. But I do believe you’ll begin.

The recording as follow up. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, were absolutely fantastic. 

Did they find a way to hold on? I just saw something. Did they find a way to let you edit a mail merge template in the system? No, definitely not, because it’s a Word document, and so basically, we’re just creating the the way to get to it, but all the editing needs to be done in word it’s not done in the system. Great question, though, Katie.

Does, does the fields come as they are in the database? I mean, if everything is in capital, that’s how it will come out. No. Maria, great question, beautiful question. So your merge fields are not case sensitive, right? So if I go in here, remember I made that merge field capital, and it was all capitals, initial gift date, right? But you’ll notice, well, that’s the date field, but it will not be capitalized, right? So for example, if the if salutation field were all caps, that’s just the field name, it’s still going to put in what’s in the field. So no, the merge fields are not case sensitive. Great question. 

Oh, you’re most welcome, Maria. That’s excellent question. And Katie says, One day, one day. Yeah, I don’t know how that would work. That’s not where my brain is, but I know that, because it’s a Word document, we want to clean it up, but it would be really cool to have that feature to update it right in in DonorPerfect. That would be neat.

Any other questions, these are great. Thank you so much.

Well, I want to thank you all so much for joining me today. I certainly hope this empowers you to get in there and do those letters and really use DonorPerfect to its fullest potential, because it really will make your time and effort. Just cut it right on down right you’re going to be able to do that. And I also want to thank you all so much for all that you do to make this world a better place. I love my job and I love my clients, our clients and we thank you so much for allowing us to be a small, small part of the amazing work that you do each and every day. So thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for just being who you are, and we hope that you will take advantage of all of the resources that are here for you to help you in your journey with DonorPerfect. Thank you all so much. If you don’t have any more questions, oh, thank you, Katie, that’s very sweet. Thank you, Jean, thank you Rafaella, yes, you’re more than welcome to ask any questions. Otherwise, I’m going to give you the gift of time. 11 minutes is better than none. So if you need to go, please, please feel free to do so. If you do have a question, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thank you, Kate. I appreciate that. And Maria, thank you so so much. I truly appreciate your your warm comments. Very much.

All right, folks, well, that’s it for me. Have a great rest of the day, and I hope to see you tomorrow in our financial reporting webinar. Take care. Bye, bye.