Thanks, Dave. Jack's entire reply to another user is shown below yours and these are the steps I followed. Reading it again, I suppose it's not THAT obscure with respect to establishing the initial relationship, but rather fairly exhaustive in his explanation of how to implement subsequent renewal notices and other things.
I've done everything he suggested, and I am able to produce an acknowledgement letter to a GIVEE which references the specific GIVER. While I don't care much about sending renewal notices to GIVERS, I do want (as Jack suggests in the last paragraph) to be able to produce a "Thank you" letter to a GIVER which references the names of all the GIVEES associated with that GIVER's payment, i.e. all the individuals for which he has bought a membership. At this point, I don't understand how to apply his logic to my situation. Since this letter must somehow query several (giftee) records, I'm not exactly sure how to have it "gather" all those names together into a single letter layout. A script, maybe? Thanks, Colin >> Awhile back, Jack posted a nifty way to show (by a relationship) in the >> payments file of a recipient's record from whom the gift membership came. >> I've used his technique to send acknowledgements to the giftee that their >> payment came from Mr. X. >> >> What I'd like to do now is the opposite. In any given giftor's payment >> record, show which individual(s) he bought gift memberships for. I'd like >> to do this so that I can print a letter thanking Mr. X for his gift >> memberships to: >> Mr. Y >> Mr. Z >> etc. >> > > This isn't obvious - Jack is pretty clever and can create some pretty > obscure solutions. Maybe it would help us if you would summarize > Jack's solution. My guess is that he uses some calculated keys to > establish the relationship and by reversing the logic it would be > possible to show the other relationship. HERE IS JACK'S REPLY TO ANOTHER USER W/R TO DONORS: Here's one way to track the donor of a gift membership: - Create a standard number field in the paymnts_ file named "GiftFrom". Place this field onto the Payment Entry screen. - Create a relationship in the paymnts_ file named "GiftFrom". The relationship is based upon the "GiftFrom" field matching the "RECORD NUMBER" field in the names_ file. DO NOT SELECT ANY OF THE CHECKBOXES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE "DEFINE RELATIONSHIP" SCREEN. - Place the "GiftFrom::NAME LINE\ORG" field next to the "GiftFrom" field on the Payment Entry screen. This will allow you to see the name of the giver, if one is entered. - When you receive a gift membership, enter the record number of the giver in the field named "GiftFrom". The name of the giver should appear. - On the Data Entry screen for the person who received the gift membership, put an "N" in the Contact Flag named "Renewals". - When you produce your normal renewal mailings, make sure that you omit any records where the "Renewals" flag is "N". This will keep the receiver of the gift from getting the standard renewal notice. When you want to produce renewal notices for the gift memberships, you'll do it from the paymnts_ file. Here's how: - Go to the Payment Entry screen. - Hit the "Find" button. - In the "Payment For" field enter "Dues". - In the "Expire Date" field, enter the range of expiration dates that you want to use for this batch of renewal notices. - In the "GiftFrom" field, enter "> 0". - Perform the find by hitting the "Find" button on the left side (Status Area) of the screen. The above search will give you all of the dues payments that expire in your desired date range AND that were given by someone else. You can produce letters to the givers of the membership by referencing the fields in the relationship named "GiftFrom", since this relationship points at the record in the names_ file that represents the giver of the money, NOT the person for whom the membership payment is recorded. You can create these letters by (a) modifying one of the existing letter layouts in the paymnts_ file (just because they're named "Thanks #1", "Thanks #2" etc. doesn't mean that they HAVE to be used for thank you letters); or (b) creating a new layout in the paymnts_ file and using it; or (c) exporting the appropriate fields to a merge file and creating the letter in your favorite word processor. Hope this helps. >Oops, I made a mistake. We do not record the DONOR as giving both a donation >and a $0 dues recipient. We record him/her as only giving a donation--and >the GIFTEE as a $0 dues recipient. That way the trail is clear on both >sides. I also neglected to mention that in the Pay Memo field I indicate, >for the proper record, who the gift is to and who the gift is from so I can >track that in a small way too. What I haven't dealt with yet is how to >trigger a gift of membership dues notice to the donor. Someday... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Noll - ebase consultant and wildlife advocate Check out a *great* program at www.beardogs.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------ Reminder to each recipient: To change your list account preferences, go to http://email.sparklist.com/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=support and enter the email address you used to subscribe to the ebase support list:: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- ebase - Relationship Management for Nonprofits, http://www.ebase.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------
