The Select button on the DonorQuest toolbar opens the Creating A Selection window, which looks like this:
There are different types of filters you can use in creating a selection. The Range Filter is the one you will probably use most often, since it is the broadest type of filter, allowing you to select donor information based on range values for any DonorQuest field -- including any custom fields you create. The various types of filters are shown in tabs across the Creating A Selection window. We will explore each of these in separate topics. For now we will cover the more general options of the Creating A Selection window.
The Selection Name
The first thing you will enter when creating a new selection is a Selection Name. The name of the selection should be meaningful since it will serve as a label for the selection which other users may rely on to know what the selection is about. What you type here does not affect how records are selected, it is simply a description which stays with the selection, and which also prints in the title lines of any reports you use with the selection. Other users can see selections you create, as you can see theirs. The point is to share and not duplicate effort, and having a meaningful name for each selection helps with this.
The Selection Source
The selection source specifies which of the three DonorQuest datasets will be accessed during the selection. All active donors and prospects are maintained in the donor dataset, so that is normally what you will use for the selection source. However, it is also possible to base the selection on the archive or buffer datasets. The archive dataset is where inactive donor and prospect accounts are stored, and the buffer dataset is simply a temporary holding area where you may have placed copies of existing donor and prospect accounts.
The Source Table
Each dataset has seven tables, each storing a different aspect of a donor's account data. The header table stores the main biographical information for all donors and prospects (name, address, list codes, etc.), and it is normally what you will use for the source of a selection if you are running a mailing list or other constituent-centered report. However, if you wish to select specific donations, pledges, memos, etc., then you should set the source table accordingly. For financial reports in which you wish to filter by specific donations (for a range of time, specific campaigns, etc.) you would choose Donations for the Source Table. Basically, anytime you need to pick and choose which donations go into making up a report, you use Donations for the Source Table. If you're mainly after biographical (name/address) information (to use for a mailing for example), then you choose Header. If you need to filter by pledges, memos, etc., you would choose one of those tables as the Source Table.
While some precomputed donation totals are stored in the Header table for convenience and they are shown on the few Header reports designed to include yearly totals, they are only monetary calendar and fiscal year totals. For totals involving subgroups of donations totaled by anything other than Calendar or Fiscal year, you would again use Donations for the Source Table of the selection, and allow the Report Layout you choose to use with the Selection Result to do the totaling for you.
Basic Exclusions
You may also optionally choose to exclude certain donors from your selection before going into more detail with the specific filter options. For example you might be doing a selection for the donors for which you are going to mail a solicitation. In this case it is easy to simply check the box for Exclude 'Do Not Solicit'. When this box is checked in the Creating A Selection window, the corresponding checkbox in a donor record must not be checked in order for the donor to qualify. This simply means that putting a check in the Exclude 'Do Not Solicit' box will exclude any donor who has a check in the Do Not Solicit field of their account (found on the Constituency tab of the Main Information Form). This concept works similarly for the Exclude 'Bad Address' and Exclude 'Inactive' options. Note that when beginning a new selection, these exclusion options are on by default to protect you from accidentally doing a solicitation mailing to constituents with a bad address, or those who have been designated as inactive, or who do not want to receive solicitations.
At this point you may enter more specific filtering information, using one or more of the filter tabs. The filter tabs work together, so that any conditions you enter in any of them must all be true for a record to qualify and be included in the Selection Result.