How to export the most recent appeal from a constituent record

Melissa Sheinman

I'm trying to export the appeal with the most recent date from a constituent's "Appeal" tab.  I chatted with Blackbaud support and they said the only way was to export ALL the appeals/dates from the constituent record and manually sort through to find the most recent.  I'm hoping that there is an easier way.  Thanks in advance!

Melissa

John Heizer

I fear that the support rep was right. It could be done in Crystal Reports via a subreport that only shows the one most recent record, but it can't be done in a plain vanilla Export.

Melissa Sheinman

Thanks, John.  Not what I was hoping to hear but happy to have the confirmation.  Much appreciated!

Spring Velazquez

Melissa - is there any reason you're not exporting "Last Gift" info? If you're looking for the most recent gift it has everything you need (including appeal code). Unless I'm reading your question wrong?

Melissa Sheinman

Hi Spring! Thanks for your reply.  We are trying to find the last point of contact we had with the constituent regardless of whether or not they replied, which is why we aren't exporting from the most recent gift.  We are doing some prospect cultivation and don't want to solicit them if they recently received something from us. 

Catherine Burns

Hi Melissa. Support would be right about the export, but you may be able to save time in Excel with a bit of preparation. If you have a robust naming convention for your appeals e.g. prefixed with the financial year at least, or year and month, then you may be able to do a left to right sort in Excel that might make sorting easier. Or if you only want to know the date of the last appeal and use start dates for your appeals then export that instead of the appeal name and the sort would be even easier. If you don't have too many appeals then you may be able to work out which appeal it was from the start date and translate it back into the appeal name using a vlookup or the index and match formulae in Excel.