Anniversary Gift - Building a List for Workflow

Austen Brown · February 2021

We send out an email to recent donors (within last 2 years) recognizing their anniversary month - the month of their first gift to our organization. We are manually managing this process currently but would really like to build this out as a workflow, if possible.

Right now, I am running into an issue in Constituent Lists, as I do not see a dynamic option for first gift date that would generate a list based on only the month (ignoring the year). Does anyone have a work-around I could use, or is this request simply too complicated for an NXT list?

Jonathan Angell · February 2021

Hi Austen

The only thing I could think of would be to use fuzzy dates in a static query in database view, and then use that as the basis for your constituent list in NXT.

This could work on First Gift acknowledge date (or Gift Receipt date - there are a few other fields which allow fuzzy dates), but not the actual Gift date (which doesn't allow fuzzy dates). Depending on how far back you want to go, it would be reasonably quick to create the 12 queries for the 12 months (First Gift Acknowledged data "one of" 01/2015, 01/2016, 01/2017 etc to find the January first gifts) - and then use the static queries in your constituent list. You'd then just need to refresh your monthly static queries each year.

I *think* that would work - but not quite as straightforward as it could be!

Hope that helps

Jon

Austen Brown · February 2021

Hi Jonathan Angell‍ - Thanks for the idea! Once I have the static query loaded in NXT, can I apply further restrictions to it? Our Anniversary Gift messaging goes out via mail as well to another group of constituents (Donors with First Gift Last Year, Tribute Donations Only) that I would need to exclude from this workflow.

Jonathan Angell · February 2021

Yes, you can add all the usual NXT filters - the static query is used by NXT to populate the list in the first instance, and then you can apply your filters. Just need to remember to refresh each static query/list once a year to sweep up any new first-time donors in that month.

We're looking to start using workflows too, so this has been a really helpful topic to think about!

Best wishes

Jon

Austen Brown · February 2021

Thank you so much for sharing your ideas! This will be a great help! As you start on your workflow journey, here are a couple things I’ve learned about this feature that you should be aware of:

Before building an email workflow you need to have the email finalized, categorized as a ‘workflow email’ and published or you won’t be able to find it while building your workflow.
If you are adding an action as apart of your workflow, they currently cannot be marked as complete and you will manually have to do this through the system (we do this through a global change in database view).
Currently, workflows cannot be edited after they have been activated. The only way to tweak or change it in any way is to deactivate it, copy it, and then relaunch it with the changes.
As you cannot currently filter a Constituent list based on constituents with an active email, the action will be added to everyone’s record on the original constituent list regardless of whether they got the email or not. We ended up adding an attribute/custom field to constituent records in order to restrict the list to look first for constituents with a valid email and then for the additional criteria.

Eileen Wallwork · March 2021

Hi Austen,

How do you mark the action as complete? I don't see that option when I set up the workflow.

Thanks! Eileen

Austen Brown · March 2021

Hi Eileen Wallwork‍ - Yep, that is not currently an option for workflows; if you haven't already check out the NXT Idea Bank and vote for this idea.

In terms of a solution, I have a Global Change set up that that I run each morning to update the workflow actions as "Completed."

Eileen Wallwork · March 2021

Well that's a bummer. Thank you!

Anniversary Gift - Building a List for Workflow

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