Real Deal Fundraising
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Subscribe
  • About
    • Connect
    • Testimonials
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Tuesday's Tip: VIDEO tutorial, Using Excel to Create Addressees and Salutations fast

7/19/2016

0 Comments

 
When I was working at Southern Miss, we received a file to do a mailer to parents of current students. Of course, Admissions didn't have lovely and clean addressee and salutation fields and in fact, we didn't even have the parent's first name in most cases. 

I learned to use the "concatenate" formula to use that raw data to create addressees and salutations that were appropriate for direct mail. When we didn't have the parent's first name we used the student's name. It looked like "Dear Parents of John Doe,". Sometimes you make lemonade out of lemons. 

It's not uncommon in fundraising to get a list of prospects that has "raw data" with first name and last name as separate fields, no titles and no addressees or salutations. Before you can create a mail merge or import those into your database, you'll need to create the fields that you need. And you'll want to do it cleanly and efficiently. 

In this video, I'll show you 3 tricks in MS Excel that will help you save time and frustration in creating addressees and salutations for a list of prospects. 

1) Use filters to create working groups
2) Use the "concatenate" formula to string text together
3) Use "paste values" to turn your data set into editable text

If you liked this video, check out my video on using Excel's "filter by color" function to plan your donor trips. And subscribe to Real Deal Fundraising to get content like this in your inbox. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Jessica Cloud, CFRE

    I've been called the Tasmanian Devil of fundraising and I'm here to talk shop with you. 

    Subscribe

    Archives

    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    September 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016

    Categories

    All
    Advancement Services
    Alumni Relations
    Annual Giving
    Apps
    Asking
    Board Relations
    Books
    Budget
    Caller Training
    Career
    Case Building
    CFRE
    Communications
    Contact Rates Series
    Covid19
    Crisis Response
    Dance
    Data Integrity
    Data Research
    Development
    Direct Mail
    Donor Events
    Donor Relations
    E Books
    E-books
    Fiscal Year End
    Flash Mob
    Free Resources
    Fundraising
    FUNdraising Friday
    Geekery
    Giving Days
    Giving Societies
    Giving Tuesday
    Graphic Design
    Impact
    In Depth
    In-depth
    Interview
    Lobby
    Love Your Career
    Major Gifts
    Management
    Motivation Mondays
    Online
    Phonathon
    Productivity
    Public Speaking
    Quizzes
    Self Care
    Social Media
    Strategic Planning
    Student Debt
    Team Building
    TED Talks
    Telefund
    Thoughts For Thursday
    Thoughts-for-thursday
    Travel Hacks
    Travel-hacks
    Trip Planning
    Tuesdays Tip
    Tuesdays-tip
    Video
    Work From Home
    Young Alumni

    RSS Feed

What Folks Are Saying

 Jessica has been a wonderful colleague and mentor over the years.  In the beginning of my annual giving career, I found her expertise, experience and willingness to help, invaluable.  Her advice and custom phonathon spreadsheets had a direct impact on our phonathon’s success and my ultimate promotion.  As I progress in my career, I continue to value her insight and professionalism." 

​- Ross Imbler, Director of Annual Giving, Lewis and Clark Law School
 Ross Imbler

Contact Us

Photos used under Creative Commons from ZERGE_VIOLATOR, FindYourSearch, Teddy Mafia, slightly everything, COD Newsroom, Howdy, I'm H. Michael Karshis, smoorenburg, derrickbrutel, Matthew Paul Argall, TP studio, craiglea123, wuestenigel, davidmulder61, baranco1, Editor B
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Subscribe
  • About
    • Connect
    • Testimonials