Finding the Data You Want 101

All right, excellent. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Jonathan Plotkin. And this session today we are covering building selection filters in DonorPerfect. I’m going to talk about the process of building them, as well as just sort of Read More

All right, excellent. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Jonathan Plotkin. And this session today we are covering building selection filters in DonorPerfect. I’m going to talk about the process of building them, as well as just sort of what they’re used for and why we use them. Get to our first slide, here we go. First slide. So my name is Jonathan blockin. Here’s a picture of me if you want to see a still shot besides what I’m sharing on my screen now, that’s me on the left hand side, my wife on the right. Alright, so here is what we’re going to cover today, we’re going to talk about building selection filters in DonorPerfect, we’re going to talk about the difference between a filter and a report, because those are two different things. Two different things. We’re gonna talk about some tips for building selection filters. There’s a scenario where you add more than one criteria that might ring a bell for you. And we’re also going to talk about the each of the individual steps when you’re building a filter, and then something called the sidebar. That’s something within reports when we built the filters. First question that I’d want to ask if I were in your shoes is why is this important? Why do I need to know how to build selection filters? Well. So reason number one, there’s a buzzword segmentation. So the selection filter is what you’re going to use to segment your donors. This is helpful when you’re running a report. Or if you’re doing a mailing and DonorPerfect. Instead of saying, I want to see all the constituents in my database, I only want to see certain ones. So how we accomplish segmentation, meaning we only want to see certain constituents from our database is with a selection filter. You’ll get more accurate reports. Like if you’re trying to find, you know, all staff members in your DonorPerfect system, you need to be able to build a selection filter to identify who those staff members are, versus who are not staff members. So the only way you’re going to get accurate reports is if you know how to build selection filters. And then the last reason well to impress your friends, probably not going to happen in regular conversation. But I needed a third reason for why this should be important to you. That’s what I put. All right, where do we use selection filters and DonorPerfect, I’m actually going to toggle my screen now to my DonorPerfect system. So hopefully, what you are now seeing on the screen that I’m sharing is my test DonorPerfect system that I logged that I’m logged into. And I wanted to show you a few examples of places in DonorPerfect where you would use a selection filter. So in the very top right corner of the screen is what we call the Settings gear, that’s this little cog wheel looking icon here in the top right, it looks like a circle with spikes. If you hover over that, and select this option here for filters, you’ll get this page, which this is where all of the selection filters that have been saved in your DonorPerfect system live. I have a ton in here, because I use this test database all the time, you might have fewer than this or more than this. But here’s where they all are. If I’m just building a selection filter to save for later, this is what I would do it by clicking Add new filter. Another place where you would use selection filters. This is probably where you’ll most commonly use them is if you go to Reports Report Center. So basically, when you’re running a report, every single report that you can run into an imperfect gives you the ability to apply a selection filter. A really popular report that’s Ran is this one here called the export to file. I’m going to show you a few different examples of what this will look like. But in the export to file report, there is this section right here that says Selection filter, no filter selected. This is where I would apply a selection filter. So again, I’m segmenting which donors will appear in the report by using that selection filter. better example of a report or how it will look in report is the gifts by date report, very popular report that people will run when wanting to view donations in DonorPerfect. And the layout of this report is much different. There’s something called the sidebar here on the left hand side. But this should look familiar Selection filter, no filter selected. So again, this is another place where you know when when running a report and DonorPerfect we apply a selection filter. Another place where you would use a selection filter is if you’re doing a mail merge. So if you’re merging constituent records with a letter template and DonorPerfect because you’re going to print out letters for a mailing. So you do mailings mail merge to get to that section. And this again should look cool. With your selection filter, no filter selected. So when you’re performing a mail merge, you’d also use a selection filter to narrow down which constituents you want to include in that mailing. There’s just a few examples. There are actually several other places within DonorPerfect, you would use selection filters. But hopefully I’ve piqued your interest that this is something you will be using or perhaps have already been using in DonorPerfect.

Alright, so let’s talk about some examples of selection filters that you might want to build. So a list of all current board members. So instead of all the constituents in our database, we only want to see ones that are current board members. Perhaps a list of all donors that gave greater than $500 last year. To prac practical reasons you might use that is for a mailing. If you’re looking at donors that gave last year, maybe you’re want to send a solicitation to them to give again, in 2023. All constituents who live within a certain distance of a zip code, this is a really cool one. Again, that you might use that for mailing as well. Or maybe you’re having an in person event like your golf event is taking place in Philadelphia. So we want to send this mailing only to those that live within a certain number of miles of the zip code of Philadelphia. I don’t know whose lifetime giving is more than a certain amount, maybe all donations that have a certain solicitation code, or more than one solicitation code. These are some examples of selection filters you might want to build. Be thinking about these in your head of like how you would attempt to run a report showing this information as like five separate reports. We will a little later on in this session, walk through the specifics, specifics of how to build these particular selection filters. I mentioned that there’s a difference between a selection filter versus the actual report. So let’s talk about that difference. First of all, both are essential when you’re running a report, you need both a selection filter and a report. But here’s the difference. The Selection filter is what you use to identify all or only specific records. And it’s where you specify the criteria for those specific records, as opposed to the report itself is the format and layout of the actual report. So another way to think of it is the selection filter is who do I want to see in the report, as opposed to the report itself is what do I want to see about them? An example that I thought of was if the report if like the end result for me is that I want to eat candy. So I want to put candy in my mouth and eat it. That’s the report, the selection filter would be what kind of candy do I want to eat? Because you know, there’s a big difference between grabbing a handful of m&ms versus grabbing a handful of Skittles. If I really want chocolate, I want to make sure that I’m grabbing m&ms. So the selection filter is what I used to say the candy is equal to m&ms. That way, when I eat the candy, which is the report, I’ve only picked up m&ms. And if you ever reach for m&ms at approximately grab Skittles, they look very similar, big difference in how they taste. Here’s another way to think about conceptually what the difference between a selection so or I guess like what a selection filter does, is this graphic here will be see this group of people that are all different colored figures. If I want to segment those figures based on you know, all of the sort of orangish red ones, all of the lime green ones and all the blue ones, we’re taking the larger group of data and then breaking them down into different sections. So you know, show me all the ones that are orange. And this orange might represent maybe a particular flag that the donor has, maybe the color represents how much they’ve given or how much they haven’t given, or maybe the color represents, you know if they’ve attended a particular event that we’ve held in the past. But this is how we segment from the larger group of data that we have. We only want to see certain segments. We’re going to cover only standard filters in this particular session. There is something called compound filters, which were we have a separate session called selection filters. 102 compound filters, just by the name of it, you probably guessed that those are more advanced. You know, you don’t always need a compound filter. There’s a ton you can accomplish with a standard filter. But for those situations where we need something much more complex, we have the ability to create compound filters, covering that in a different session. All of The examples that I gave you a few minutes ago, those are all examples of standard filters that you would use to build. Alright, let’s talk about the actual screen where a selection filter is built. So here’s a screenshot of what that screen looks like. And I’ll real quickly just toggle back over to DonorPerfect. So remember, here, I’m on the mailings Mail Merge screen. So here’s the section where I’d apply a selection filter. When I click apply, I get this pop up box, which if you’ve used DonorPerfect, probably for more than 10 minutes, you’ll recognize the screen. And when I click add new filter, I get this pop up box. This is where I need to choose something from Box number one, box number 234, etc. Let’s close out of that. So back over to my presentation. So here’s a screenshot of that same screen. So when we click the button to add new filter, this is the pop up screen that we get. So let’s talk about each of these individual Boxes, boxes, 1234 and five, just to get a little more into the DWG bees. Okay, so in box number one, the select US spring slash table. This is where you choose what like of the criteria we’re trying to segment our donors by, we get to choose here, what screen we’re looking at. So in this example, here, we see chicken to use my pointer. So we’re looking at Main BIOS selected, then donor type, equal to individual. So the end result that we’re looking for is I want to see any constituent who is an individual or any constituent whose donor type is equal to individual. So I actually need to know what screen table the field for. Or if I’m working backwards, if I want to see individuals, I need to know, how do I mark constituents as individuals? Well, I marked them in the field for donor type. And not only do I need to know that it’s the field donor type, but I need to know what screen and table that donor type is on which in our case, it is on the the main bio screen. So in box number one, I choose main bio inbox number two, this is where I choose what fields I want to segment by, in this case donor type. In box number three, I want to see all constituents whose donor type is equal to you see here, the other options could be not equal to contain contains begins with include multiple matches, we’ll we’ll give some examples of when you’ll use those other ones, but probably the most common operator here is equal to and then in box for a click look up codes and choose individual. So the Select tables screen, I know that donor type exists on the main bio page, it’s okay if you don’t know like if you’re trying to build a filter, and you’re not even sure what screen to choose here, you could choose all screens and tables, or something that’s helpful to do is just go look up the field and DonorPerfect, which let’s do that together now. So if I go to, I need to get rid of my pen. So let’s go to constituents record. So in the constituents record, here’s the fields for donor type. So this is what I mean by saying that it’s on the main bio screen is run the main tab of the constituents record. And here’s the field as opposed to if I was looking for something that was on the gift page of the donors record. So go to gifts. And let’s look at one of the existing gifts here. So here’s something like the general ledger, General Ledger exist on the gifts page of the constituents record. Right back to our example. So main, bio and box number one, which screen are tables and on Box Number two, I choose which fields I’m looking for, in our case, donor type. Now, if donor type didn’t show up in box number two, see how I can toggle between favorite fields and all fields here in the top. If it’s not one of my favorite fields, I would have to click on All fields in order to find the fields for donor type. They’re listed alphabetically. You can manage which fields are your favorite fields by clicking this blue link to manage favorite fields section. And in box number three, this is what we call the comparison operator. So we want to see donor types that are equal to something or not equal to something less than or greater than doesn’t make sense for a donor type but less than or greater than would would make sense if we were filtering off of like gift them out. I want to see all donations that are greater than $100 or less than $100, etc. And then in box number four, that’s where we put in the value. So for want to see all constituents that have a donor type equal to individual, I can either type in the code for individual here in box number four, or click on this lookup codes button, and then choose individual from a list of options. I’m going to show you an example in DonorPerfect of what that looks

like. So I’m going to click add new filter, and that pop up screen. So in box number one, I choose main bio. And box number two, I choose donor type. Box number three, equal to. And in box number four, I can type in the I can type in the code if I knew what it was actually, I’m not even sure I think it’s ind, or, especially if I’m not sure, click lookup codes. And then, so here’s the code I N for individual, and then it puts it in there. Then I click continue and finish off the selection filter. We’ll get to that part a little bit later. But first, we’re just adding the criteria.

Right, it’s going to take some time to want to get some practice doing these. So I’m gonna walk through the process of creating a few selection filters with you just you can get exposed to it. And to have a better understanding. Some tips for building selection filters, you need to know what records you want in the output, you need to know the name of the field we’re trying to segment by the field type. And you need to know the comparison operator, like how do you want to compare as a donor type, which is on the main bio screen, and we want to see one donors that are equal to something.

A couple additional tips. So you need to know which records you want to see. And it can be really helpful to describe what you want to see in plain English. I don’t don’t have perfect has a lot of sort of like DonorPerfect lingo. Like when I say donor type is equal to individual. Some of the some of the terminology can be very DonorPerfect ask. So just describe what you want to see in plain English, that’s the best place to start. And then then we sort of like work backwards. of okay, this is who I want to see. Now let’s work backwards and like how to identify those particular constituents. Does anyone remember, there was a book that was required reading when I was in like grade school called eats, shoots and leaves. So I wanted to bring this up as as an example of why our words matter. Because in this book, it talks about the difference between eats, shoots and leaves. And we have like a panda eating shoots and leaves. Versus if you just add some punctuation, we really changed the meaning of that sentence. So here’s someone who eats shoots and leaves. So a very simple change in the phrase completely changes the like, what we’re what the sentence means. And this applies to selection filters as well. So here’s an example of a bad filter or like an ambiguous way to describe a filter. If I were to say to you that I want to see donors who gave $100 or more. Well, that sounds like you know, yeah, that’s, that’s a great filter, I know how to do that. But when you start to think about what that means, well, that could mean donors that gave a single donation of $100 or more, or it could mean donors that gave a cumulative amount of $100 or more. So then, then we realize, oh, that’s kind of ambiguous. And we need to like, get a little more or a lot more specific about who we want to see in our report. So we would change this into we could say, so a good way to phrase that which is unambiguous, would be all donors who made a one time donation of $100 or more, and then I give a date range as well. So between January 1 of 2020, and today, I could also say all donors that gave a cumulative amount of $100 or more between January 1 of 2020. And today, so that was one a one time donation versus cumulative, cumulative, just meaning like a total amount. So both of these are similar to that first example that I gave all donors that gave $100 or more, but they’re a lot more specific. Being this specific with how you describe who you want to see in the report is really necessary to build a selection filter that captures exactly Do you want to see I think this is our last tip. So tip number two. Again, you just need to be familiar with the particular field that you’re trying to segment by. So you need to know what screen the field is on. Oh, and then the prompt in the field name. So prompt is like this example here of employer. That’s the prompt, because that’s what displays on like the screen in the donors record. There’s also a field name on the back end, especially if it’s a user created field, it might. So here’s an example of that. So when I add new filter, notice how in box number two, each of these fields has a prompt, like the field for city, the prompt is just the word city. But the actual field name is in all capital letters, city, those are both the same word, but you can actually if you didn’t know this, you can change the prompt of any of your fields at any time. It’d be weird if you change the word city to I don’t know, bicycle. But it would even if you change the prompt to bicycle, it’s still the field for city. So it’s important that you know, the field that you’re trying to segment by you got to know the both the prompt in the field name. And it’s okay, if you don’t know, the screen prompt or field name for any of the fields you’re trying to build a selection filter for. That’s what our technical support team is for, just reach out to them. And we can usually the best thing to do is just say, pull up a constituents record and say, I’m trying to find anyone that has this particular field has a certain value. When you show that to the technical support representative, they’ll look in your system and be able to tell you exactly what that field is called. So it’s okay if you don’t know the screen for prompt name and field name. But the more times you do this, the the more intuitive it’ll become to you just take a little practice. So in order to build the filter, you need to know the screen fueled prompt and the field name. And then, so third tip, so this is just giving different types of fields. So there are date fields, like gift date or birth date. Numeric Fields, like the amount of the gift, the balance on a pledge, the amount of their most recent donation. And then there are coded fields. So things like the most popular coded fields are things like donor type, General Ledger solicitation, that’s anywhere in DonorPerfect, where there’s a drop down, like think of when you’re applying a general ledger code to a gift. It’s a drop down, that you can choose from any different code. And then non coded text, things like someone’s name, first name, title, first name, last name, those are all just free text boxes. So you can type anything into that. The memo field, the address fields, these are non coded just text boxes, knowing what type of field you’re filtering off of help us build the selection filter as well. All right. And then of course, you need to know which operator so I guess each of these tips is really just sort of playing off of each of these screens. So you need to know what table screen the field is on what the field name is, you choose it here, and then you have to know how you want to compare it. So you want to see anyone whose first name is equal to something not equal to something begins with something ends with something, etc.

Alright, we’re gonna talk about more than one criteria in a minute. But I think now’s a good time to show you some examples of selection filters. So that list that I had pulled up earlier, which talked about a few different things. So one of them was building a list of all current board members. Here’s how you would build a selection filter searching for any constituent that is marked as a current board member. First thing to do is let’s take a look at a constituents record in find out where that field is. So here I am in my sample record. And if I scroll down here, there’s this field here for flags. And one of the flags is board member current. Okay, so that here, I don’t think I can highlight it, but like click select flags. You see, here’s the actual like flag name, board member current CBM. So if I’m building a selection filter for anyone that has this flag, here’s how here is how I would do it. So box number one main bio because the field is on the main screen of constituents record. Box number two, flag box number three equal two because I want to see anyone that does have that particular flag in Buxton before I click the Lookup codes, and sure enough, here’s the code for board member current. So I click on that code and see it populates the code name here. Then I click Continue. And then I can save the filter if I’d like. So let’s call it all current board members. Flag. And then, I mean, it’s not, you’re not required to save a filter when you’re running a report, but you can, and then filter folder. By default, they’re all gonna get saved in the default folder, but you can choose any folder you’d like here, or add a new folder. So let’s add one. Now, if I say, let’s call this the election filters, 101. webinar, save, and then share across all users just like it sounds. If I check that box, that means all the users at my organization have access to this filter. If I don’t check the box, then only I do. And then click Done. And then here’s our folder here on the left hand side, and here’s the filter that we just created. Let’s do a few more practice. So let’s do this one from a report. So I’m gonna go to Reports reports there. And let’s do the let’s do the gifts by date report. So here in the sidebar, the report, here’s where I apply my selection filter. So there’s actually the filter I just created is applied automatically, I’m gonna click the X to remove that filter. Because we’re gonna build a new filter now. So the next one on my list was, if I want to see any donation that has a solicitation code of Giving Tuesday, 2021 or giving Tuesday 2022. So I’m running a list of donations. And I want to see any donation that has this code or this code. So here’s how I would apply that filter. So once there’s no filter selected, I click Apply. And then in this pop up window, I’m going to add a new filter. So this yield that we’re looking for, is on the gift pledge screen, because the solicitation code is on the individual gifts. And then display. So here’s the field for solicitation code, solicit, underscore code. But if, let’s say it wasn’t one of my favorite fields, if I toggled to display all fields, then I get a list of all the fields. But I can scroll down alphabetically to the esses and it is here. Or a neat trick you can do is when you’re looking at all the fields, to sort of like a quick search, if I just click on any of them, and I start to type on my keyboard, it’ll jump down, so I just typed Sol, and then it jumps down alphabetically to solicitation. Alright, so choose that. Now the comparison operator. So this selection filter we’re trying to build is any gift that has a solicitation code of Giving Tuesday 2021 or giving Tuesday 2022. So in the Select comparison operator, we’re going to choose include multiple matches, or multiple different solicitation codes. I’m kind of zoomed in on my monitor, which, which is why it’s getting cut off. Right, so in box number four, we choose lookup codes. Now, instead of only choosing one, notice how there’s checkboxes, I can choose multiple codes, I’ll show you the difference. So in box number three, if I change this to just equal to when I click lookup codes, I can only choose one code. It’s not select all that apply, but I literally just choose one. But if in box number three I choose include multiple matches. Now when I click lookup codes, I can choose as many as I’d like, which I don’t actually think I have a Giving Tuesday code in here. So let’s just we’ll pretend we’ll say it’s the annual appeal, chosen 15 and 2016. So I’ve chosen two different codes. Now I click done, then click an NC both code names have appeared here. Click Continue. And it’s only one line of criteria, but it’s this code is in this or this. So this is going to show me donations that have either this code or this code that I can save the filter. share across all users if I like and then click done because the Selection filter is a, a gift filter, we’re looking at gifts that have this code or this code, I get this new checkbox, which says exclude pledges and linked gifts. You’ll only see that when it’s a filter based on gift information. And just like it says, If I check the box, I will be executing pledges and linked gifts from the results. If I don’t check the box, I won’t be executing them. pledges are pledges. Linked gifts are things like notifications, soft credits. So those are those are typically things you don’t include in financial reports. But if you wanted to include them, you would uncheck that box and then click done.

All right. Just want to do a quick look at the questions and make sure it looks like everyone is getting their questions answered. Alright, let’s do another practice Selection filter. So one of the ones that I mentioned, as an example, was considered constituents that live within a certain number of miles from a zip code. So we’ll do that one in the export to file report. So whenever you add a new filter, when you open up a new report, it will show that filter on the new report that you open. So this is this is good practice. If you’re ever running a report, and you’re not getting the expected results, make sure you don’t unintentionally have a filter there that you weren’t expecting. And if you do, you can click the pencil icon to edit that filter, or just click the X to remove the filter. So do I want to remove it? Yes, I do. Now it says no filter selected. So I know there’s no selection filter there. Alright, so this selection filter, we want to see all donors that gave a cumulative amount of $500 or more last year. So this one’s a little trickier. So we’ll apply and add a new filter. So the field that I’m going to use for this, there’s a field and DonorPerfect call last year calendar year to date. It’s okay if you didn’t already know that that field existed. But it’s a good one to know it really comes in handy. Last year calendar year to date is the field that shows the cumulative amount that the donor gave last year, and our case in 2022. So inbox number one, I’m gonna choose main bio, because this field exists on the main screen of the constituents record. And then in box two, I don’t want calendar year to date I want last year calendar year to date, which is not one of my favorite fields, cuz it’d be here alphabetically under the ELLs. So I’m going to toggle up here to display all fields. Now when I scroll down to the ELLs, I see the field for last year see YTD or last year calendar year to date, it’s a good field to be aware of. It’s the cumulative amount given by the donor in the last calendar year. Right next to it we have last year YTD YTD refers to the fiscal year. So if your fiscal year is different than your calendar year, that’s another helpful one to use. Like if you go from July 1 Through June 30, then you can look at the total amount given by the donor in the fiscal year set of calendar year. But we’re gonna go off of calendar year. Alright, box three greater than or equal to. So we want to see constituents that gave $500 or more last calendar year. So if it’s $500 or more, we would choose greater than or equal to, if I only want to see those that gave greater than $500 or more than $500 that I choose this comparison operator. And there would be a difference because if someone’s given exactly $500. If I want to include them, we would choose this greater than or equal to, if I want, if I don’t want to include them, if they’ve given exactly 500 They have to have given more than 500 that I would choose greater than and then in box four, I would just type in the amount so 500 When it’s $1 amount that we’re filtering off of inbox for you don’t do any decimal places, dollar signs or commas, just type in the numbers 500. Then I click Continue. Then here’s my line of criteria. Last year county your state is greater than 500. And then I’d save the filter as and then click Done. Now let’s do let’s let’s jump on bump this up a notch. Let’s say I want to do a type of live unfilter. You’re all probably familiar with a live bunch report. So constituents that gave last year, but not yet this year. So I can build a selection filter that captures those constituents. But we’re going to bump up the stakes for that. Because it’s just it’s a little more complicated. So donors that gave last year but not yet this year, this is actually going to require two different criteria when we build the selection filter. So in box number one, we’re actually going to do the same field that we just did the last year, calendar year to date. So last year, see YTD is greater than zero. Because live on they gave last year, but they haven’t given yet this year. So main bio last year, greater than zero they gave last year. Now we’re going to click this button here to add more criteria. And we’re going to add a second line of criteria. So main bio, in Bucks number two calendar year to date, that’s the cumulative amount given in the current calendar year is equal to zero. Then click Continue. Alright, so here’s our two lines of criteria, you’ll notice every time we add a line of criteria, it comes up here as an as an SQL statement. So l y c YTD that’s the total given last calendar year is greater than zero, but see YTD that’s the total given this current calendar year is equal to zero. So these are two different lines of criteria. And then we want to see donors that have that meet both of these criteria. So that’s where this field comes in combine criteria with this line only shows up. When you have more than one criteria, you can choose do I want to combine these with an N statement, or an or statement. Anyone want to take a guess, for this particular selection filter? Do we want this to be an and or an or statement, you should be able to type that in the chat.

So if anyone said, and you are correct, so we want to see constituents that meet this criteria. And this criteria. So we would choose that here. The difference would be if we chose or we would say I want to see any donor that gave more than $0. Last year, or they gave exactly $0 this year. So that would be a much broader search than constituents that gave greater than zero last year and exactly $0 this year. So we want and for this to be a live report, they meet this criteria and this criteria. And then click Done. I have a slide about that. So when you’re adding more than one criteria, here’s the comparison operator of an or or if you want to do an or statement, if you want to see any constituent that meets any one of the criteria. And this is a larger result of a broader filter versus an and statement is if the constituent needs to meet all of the criteria in the selection filter, it’s a smaller result because of a Venn diagram is helpful, or means they meet the criteria of blue or red. And means they meet the criteria of blue and red. So I guess they’re pink when you combine those two together.

Alright, let’s take them. Let’s talk about the sidebar for a minute. So the sidebar appears in certain types of reports that you run in, DonorPerfect. So pretty much every report that you run, like anywhere where you’re able to add a selection filter, you’re going to have this option here where you apply the selection filter, so it should say Selection filter, no filter selected, and then you can click Apply. Most reports when you’re running them as well, actually not all of them that I can think of, um, you also have this checkbox up here to include no male names. So those two are pretty standard for any report that you’re running. The include no male names. It’s actually just another way to segment your constituents. Every constituent has this checkbox

So this checkbox here that says do not send mail. So usually you’re checking this box, if there’s a reason that the donor should not receive mail, maybe they have an incomplete address, they’re deceased. Or they want a temporary hold something like that. So this checkbox is what this field is referring to, that says, include no male names. If we check this box when we run the report, that means when we run the report, we will include those constituents that have opted to not receive mail or they’re marked as do not send mail. If we don’t check that box, then we will not include them. So a good rule of thumb is, if you are running a report that you’re using for a mailing, you are not going to include no mail names because you, they don’t want to receive mail or they shouldn’t receive mail. So you don’t want to send the mail. But if you are just running a report, like let’s say a financial report, you want to see all the donations that came in in a certain date range, well, you probably do want to include no mail names, so that you’re including all the data in your system, even if you’re you know, some of the constituents don’t want to receive mail. Okay.

So, talking about the sidebar again. So everything in this bottom section here, these are things that you will use to segment your constituents, we have the selection filter itself. So you can apply some sort of selection filter to say, these constituents, not these, and then each of the fields below it, you can also use this to specify I want to see constituents that meet this criteria only. This top part, I think I can change colors here. I don’t know how, right, so this top part up here. This is where you can do things like manage fields, manage fields is where you would have my No my I don’t want to overwhelm you with my drawings here. But manage fields, this icon here, this doesn’t change the fields that appear in the report. It just changes the fields that appear in the sidebar, which the sidebar, which I’ll show you an example of this. It is a way to segment which constituents or which donations show up in the report. So manage fields doesn’t change what’s in the report results as far as like which columns are in the report, but it does change which fields will show up down here. And then this top section, this is just things for the report like sort order, we’re changing the alphabetical or other criteria that the results of the report are sorted by title for listing, this is just a title for the report. So you’re not really using this to segment information just change how it’s sorted or what the title of it is. me show you an example of this. So when running a report that has a sidebar

we’re looking at the gifts by date report. So we’ll pull that one up again as an example.

So in this sidebar, and each of these sidebars will look a little different. The information here or there’s a bunch of stuff here, this is a good example. So things like donor ID, donor type state, you may or may not have these fields when you pull up your own sidebar, because you can change that by clicking Manage fields, let’s say. So just an ID genotype state, maybe I also want to include city, I can go main bio city, and then I click this right facing arrow. It brings over city here. I click save. So it’s just one more thing I can filter by. So I can if I type in the word Miami, then only I’ll probably no one will come up because I have Pennsylvania selected as the state, but it will only show those constituents that have a city that’s equal to Miami. And then I can also click Manage fields. And I can select fields and remove them by clicking the left facing arrow and it removes them as an option in the sidebar. This sidebar is something you can use. So I’m going to clear all these values. So notice that see that they’re all blank. And let’s remove his date range up here as well. So if I only wanted to see donations that came in between January 1 of 2023. And today, I can put in a date range up here, I could apply a selection filter for the date of gift is between this range, but I can also just use the sidebar. So see the field for date of gift is here in the sidebar, if I type in the dates of January 1 2023, until today’s date, which is the second now when I run the report, even though I haven’t applied a selection filter, it’s only going to show me gifts that are in this date range. Here they are here. Let’s see. So one of the gifts have a general ledger code of building fund. So of these six donations, only one has a general ledger code of building fund. So in this box for general ledger, by click this binoculars icon, I can choose what General Ledger codes to include. And if I choose building fond, done, Run Report. Now again, it’s going to segment the results of the report by only those gifts that are in this date range, and only those gifts that have this general ledger code. So see that just the one shows up. So the sidebar is something you can use in like in combination with a selection filter, or instead of a selection filter to segment which donors and donations show up in the results. And then once you want to clear all values, you can manually select them and delete them. Or you can just click this eraser icon that says clear values, and then they’ll all disappear. Whatever fields you put in your sidebar, by clicking Manage fields, these are only for your particular sidebar, it’s not going to change it for all of the users in your organization.

Alright, let’s do a few more examples. So this first example, let’s build a selection filter that using this particular port, the donors names, addresses and phone numbers report to generate a list of individuals living in the state of Pennsylvania. I’m going to go to DonorPerfect and go to Reports reports.

And I can scroll down alphabetically to find this report. Or if you didn’t know you can actually type in the search bar here in the top right. And once I type in the word names, you see here’s the reporting one donors name donor names, addresses and phone numbers. So I’ll select that report.

All right. So do I want to include no male names? Yes, because I want to see everyone in my database. There’s a selection filter applied, which I don’t want. So I’m gonna click the X to remove that filter. Right now there’s no selection filter. And all of these values here are blank. So two options if I only want to see constituents that live in Pennsylvania, I can do no selection filter. But then I can just choose the state of Pennsylvania here in the sidebar. So binoculars, scroll down to Pennsylvania select Pennsylvania and click Done. Now when I run report, I will only get constituents that live in the state of That’s option number one. And sure enough, here we can see in their dresses, they all have Pennsylvania listed option number two instead of using the sidebar, so clear values. So the state field is blank. I can apply a selection filter for the state of Pennsylvania, so add new filter the field for state is on the main bio screen so I’ll choose Maine bio and box number one. Box number two, I’m going to choose state equal to in box three and then in box four lookup codes and choose the code for Pennsylvania

and continue and I can save this I want to say donors in PA And then done. Now when I run report, I’ll get the exact same results. So donors that are in Pennsylvania, but I did a selection filter instead of using the sidebar here. I’m gonna run through a few more examples, because we only have another six minutes left. And I want to I think the these examples are helpful. So we’re going to use that same report, donors names, addresses and phone numbers report, we’re going to apply a selection filter for records that have no address, city, state or zip code. So this is going to be a filter that has multiple criteria, it’s actually going to be one criteria for each of those for the address, city state zip code. And this is actually a really helpful Selection filter to have in your bank. So if you’re following along at home, or if you’re taking notes, this is a good one to create and use for the future. Because any constituents that either the address, city state or zip code is blank. That’s an opportunity to like correct to their record for mailings in the future, or to mark the record as someone that shouldn’t be mailed, because you don’t want to mail someone that you have missing address information or it’s not going to send. So here’s how we’ll do that. So let’s remove our current selection filter. And then we’re going to apply filter. And add new filter. So we want to see constituents that either their address, city state or zip code, one of those four things, at least one of those four things is blank. So here’s how we do that in box one main bio. And box two, we want to select the field for address. But you can see that’s not one of my favorite fields. So let’s make it a favorite field, I could toggle to all fields to choose it there. Or I can click this link to manage my favorite fields. Let’s add the field for address

here’s the fields for address here. I’m going to select that box. And save.

Now in my favorite fields address is one of the options. Okay, so box number one main bio address. And then in box two, we’re going to choose is blank or is null. When you choose that in box number three, then nothing needs to be put in box number four, because we’re just saying main bio, the address is now okay, add more criteria to click this button here. Now we’re gonna say main bio city is blank or is null. Then add more criteria, you should see a pattern here main bio state is blank, or is null. Then add more criteria. And we’re gonna say main bio, zip code or zip is blank is null and continue. Alright, so here’s our four criteria, we’ve specified that the address is no city is no state is no zip is null. Now very important when we combine the criteria we want to say for so if we want to see constituents that either have an address as null, or the city is null or state is null or zip is null, we do or if we chose and it’d be a much smaller group of constituents that they have to have all four of these have to be null. So if they have three out of four is blank, but the fourth one is filled in, they’re not going to show up. As opposed to or I mean, this one or this one, or this one or this one. Alright, say fill drive, we’ll say any address info, no. Put that in our collection fill filters webinar folder. And done by now when I run report. I actually don’t know if I have any one that meets that. I probably do. I do. So here’s the column for address. So all of the constituents that show up here have at least one of those fields. Blank looks like this constituent here. They have three out of four filled in address, city and state but they don’t have a zip code. Or some of them just everything’s blank. So this is a really good filter to use when you are wanting to clean up your data. Okay, let’s do one more. Let’s do one more test filter I’d mentioned on You can do a filter for constituents that live in a certain number of miles from a zip code. So I’ll real quickly show you that one. So I’m gonna apply filter, add new filter. And we’ll do main bio, zip code. And then notice here on the right hand side, so if I do equal to, I can either type in a zip code, like 12345, which is actually a real zip code. So I can type in a zip code, zip code is equal to that. Or I can leave that blank. And I can say, donors that are within a certain number of miles. So within 10 miles of 1234, or five, or five miles, there we go. Schenectady, New York. So within five miles of zip code 12345. This is just a cool way to segment your constituents, especially if you’re doing a mailing, like an invitation to an event that’s held in a specific geographical area, you can mail people that are within a certain number of miles of that area. Okay, I hope that this information has been helpful, I’m gonna, I know we’re sort of running out of time here. So quick recap. Selection filters are a way in which you can choose which records you want to be included in the output of your report. The comparison operators are what you use to specify how you want to search. So constituents that are equal to this or not equal to that. If you have more than one criteria, you can add more criteria and combine it with either AND or OR there’s a big difference between the two. And then the last thing, we have the sidebar, which has options to select particular constituent records, almost to be used, like in addition to or instead of the selection filter. I’m happy to stay on for a few extra minutes for anyone that has questions. Thank you so much, Donna, I know you were answering questions in the chat as they came in. So feel free to to ask any questions, I’m happy to stay for a few extra minutes. And if you do need to go thank you very much for attending the session today.

You’re very welcome. Thank you very much. Glad, glad that you found it very helpful. My pleasure. Thank you, Leonard. Alright, so question in the chat, can we show another example? Absolutely, I’m happy to build another filter. But if you have an example that you’d like to see, feel free to type that in the chat. In the meantime, so another example, here’s a good example of a filter that you might want to do is, if you want to look at, there you go, it’s in the chat now of lifetime donation. So maybe we want to see constituents that have given a certain amount over their total lifetime giving. So there is a field for that. So I’m going to add a filter. The field for total lifetime giving is on the main page of the constituents record. And the field is actually called lifetime gifts total, the actual field name is gift underscore total. So this is the thing to look for is gift underscore total. Because the prompt is often changed sometimes says lifetime gift total in years, it might just say give total. So that’s the field that represents the cumulative amount of donors given in their lifetime. So we can say their lifetime giving is greater than or equal to $5,000. So just type in 5000 and then run that report. Or maybe we want to see constituents whose lifetime gifting is equal to $0. Because we want to see could we have in our system that has never given before or they’ve given a total of $0? So gift underscore total is the field for that. Alright, so I see a question there total number of donations received from every constituent of all time. So there is a field that counts the total number of donations that a constituent has made. So if we add new filter, again, that’s on the main screen of the constituents record. The field is actually called number of gifts. That’s the prompt. The field name is just the word gifts. So look for this field name of gifts. It’s probably called number of gifts in your in your system, but that could be changed. So if we say that number of gifts is greater than zero, that would show us any constituent that ever made Did donation like they have at least one gift in their system? And of course, you’ll want to display the column for a number of gifts in your report. So you can see specifically how many gifts have they made. Or if we want to see donors have given a lot of gifts, you can say, you know, they’ve given greater than or equal to, you know, 15 donations. So we only want to see constituents that have given a total of 15 or more separate donations.

I see a question there about assignment report, save us both making sure. So as far as doing a 500 report, which, by the way, a good rule of thumb is never not sure how to make a selection filter, please, please, please reach out to our technical support team. These are kind of fun puzzles to do. And so if you’re not sure how to create it, if you reach out to the support team, they can walk through it with you, they’ll ask you clarifying questions to get to the bottom of exactly what you’re looking to build, and then give you the steps on how to build it. So you mentioned the size of Ontraport. So that’s a constituent that gave in some year in the past, but they haven’t given this year can be very similar to the live Ontraport. So we’ll say main bio. A way that you could do it is you could say lifetime gift total is greater than zero. I mean, the highlight everything. So lifetime gift total, greater than zero, so they’ve given more than $0 over the course of their lifetime, on an add more criteria. And then you could say, calendar year to date is exactly equal to zero. So the gift underscore total, that’s their lifetime giving is more than $0. But the total they’ve given in the current calendar year is equal to $0. So that would essentially be a Seibon. Report, they gave some point in the past, but they haven’t given yet this calendar year. That that could be a way to do it, there’s actually multiple ways you could do it, because we also have fields for the date of their most recent donation. So you could actually a simpler way to do this is you could just say main bio, last gift date is less than or equal to January 1 of 2023. So if we said so this field last contribution date, which is their last the date of their most recent donation, it was on or before January 1 of 2023, or I guess I just want to maybe just say, is before to January 1 2023. That means they’ve given at some point before January 1 of 2023. But they haven’t given yet since that’s another way you could accomplish that same thing. I see a question about running a report where donors have been given 2020, but not in 2021. That’s also possible that possible to do. So that’s just a matter of becoming familiar with the fields and DonorPerfect. So just like we have the field for calendar year to date, which is the cumulative amount given this calendar year. And last year, calendar year to date, the cumulative amount given last year 2022. We also have two years ago calendar year to date, three years ago, calendar year to date, etc. So we could say that I want to see anyone that gave greater than $0 in 2020, but gave exactly $0 in 2021. So they gave something in 2020. They gave nothing in 2021. That would be a way you can build that particular filter. Is there a way to determine if the donor is a new donor? Yeah, absolutely. however you define a new donor. So this would be a good example of putting something into like a plain English statement. So if we were to say like the definition of a new donor is their very first donation was in this calendar year, so on or after January 1 of 2023. We do have a field for that. So add the filter. So main bio, there’s a field called initial gift date. So initial underscore gift underscore date greater than or equal to January 1 of 2023. So that criteria will show you the date of the donors very first donation to your organization was on or after January 1 of 2023. So if that’s how you would qualify a new donor or what however you qualified if it’s if they gave since January 1 of 2022. You know, they they’re a first time donor within the past year approximately. You can just change that date range to whatever you’d like. Alright, excellent. I hope this has been really helpful. It takes time To learn these and become comfortable, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to the technical support team. I’m going to go ahead and end the session now. Thank you very much for joining us today. And we will be having a selection filters 102 sessions, so the more advanced selection filters coming up soon, so we hope to see you there as well. All right, thank you all very much.