A: Sorting donors into groups of people who share some characteristic(s) is an essential part of fundraising, whether it is used to send a poignant letter to lapsed donors, print invitations to a special event, or produce reports to help you analyze past fundraising efforts.

In FundRaiser Spark, Select, and Professional, you can have both temporary Queries, created just for the purpose of printing a report or a batch of letters, and saved Queries, which we call Groupings. Groupings can be created one day and re-used on later occasions, and can be created by one staff member and used later by another. They can also be kept forever, and periodically refreshed with updated data.

All three FundRaiser programs make it easy to sort on giving patterns. Sorting based on contribution date ranges, amounts and codes is as simple as selecting from a list or entering two dates to define the date range (for example: January 1 through December 31 of last year). You can also find people who gave during some date range but not since then. Or, who gave at least $500, or who bought tickets to last year's gala, or have never given, or... The possibilities are limited only by your imagination!

All three FundRaiser programs can sort on donor characteristics, especially those based on giving patterns, donor codes that you create, and on postal code ranges.