Hi there,
I'm trying to pull a list of all $5,000 + donors, and I need to include all donors who have been soft-credited; for example, the list will pull foundations, but not the constituent attached to the foundation. I've been told I need to add a field for this in system tables, and that someone on this forum might be able to walk me through it. Can someone help me out?
Thanks so much!
This situation and similar ones come up quite frequently for us. I finally ended up creating a custom view based on vs_contribution and t_creditee. Then I built several custom list criteria and output set elements based on that view to let me do exactly what you're talking about. (We haven't been using it for long, but so far so good.)
Creating a custom view is something you would need your database admin to do for you, but once you have that set up, you can set up the list criteria yourself if you have access to t_keyword, (and output set elements if you have tr_query_element and tr_query_element_parameter.)
There are some caveats to doing it this way, however. It's possible to have multiple soft credits for the full amount on the same contribution, for example, and you should be aware that the soft credit doesn't necessarily get adjusted when the gift is adjusted.
I'm happy to go further into the details of what we're doing, if that would be useful. I am not a DBA myself but I have the SQL for the custom view and our custom list criteria and would be happy to share.
...and if others have found cleaner solutions to this, I'd love to hear what they are! :)
I'll second Matthew's method. I kept getting requests for development lists that treated creditees as donors. So I created a custom view that folds contributions and soft credits together and treats them all the same.
The caveats Matthew mentioned are important ones for sure. But as long as every one knows when to use the custom list elements and when to use the standard ones, you should be in good shape. If this is something you need even once a month then I think it is definitely worth exploring.
I'd be happy to share the SQL for the view or answer questions if you have any.