In a recently (Oct. 3, 2014) posted blog by Kim Klein, the question of how to greet donors and prospects in letters and emails is addressed. While the article seems to favor erring on the side of formality, when in doubt, it also recognizes that there are times to be informal, and even quite casual, during correspondence.
In FundRaiser the word processing is built into the program, allowing access to all fields of data for merging into letters as needed. This enables you to write "form" letters that have the personal look and feel that used to be possible only through individually crafted letters. The way you greet people in a letter can be personalized for each name record in FundRaiser, as well.
FundRaiser has two salutation fields per name record: Formal and Informal. It has the ability to set either form as the default for each name record. And that means that, as you learn more about individual donors, you can customize their records to more closely match what THEY prefer your relationship to be. FundRaiser's default is to use the Formal salutation, but you can change that universal default in the Options section, or leave it the default and change individual records as needed.
Another choice comes when creating letter templates in the word processor and entering the "salutation" function. Using the function, you can FORCE the formal form, or FORCE the informal form, or simply let the form be determined by the DEFAULT setting on each name record as the letter is being printed (or emailed).
And, finally, should there be NO salutation on the name record at the time the letter is produced, this function provides and alternate salutation option. This might be the word "Friend", or "Supporter", or something else of your choosing. Usually it's better to use a name than not, so FundRaiser will ONLY use the alternate salutation if NO other salutation exists on the name record. Of course, if you really want the letter to say "Dear Friend" you simply type that into the letter template, rather than using a salutation function.
If you want more information about word processing in FundRaiser, check out the documentation and training videos available in the Customer Portal section of our website.