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Overview
Dynamic salutations allow the Development/Advancement office to have very granular salutation configuration per development role. The Development/Advancement office often needs to send out large mailings where certain people are addressed with one salutation type/value, and other people are addressed with a different salutation type/value depending on who they are (their role). For example, if the person is a Board Member, the development/advancement office may want the salutation value for them to be Formal and use their middle initial; but if someone else’s primary development role is Alum, for the same mailing the development/advancement office may want the salutation value for the Alum to include their grad year and their maiden name. This can be accomplished using Dynamic Salutations. The specific salutation value for the individual or household is applied per Primary Development role.
If a donor has many development roles, their Primary development role is determined based on the hierarchy of those roles. Commonly, a “Board” role is ranked higher than a “Parent” role, so if the donor is both a Board Member and a Parent, the Board salutation value will be applied for this person. Because a person’s primary development role can change, their salutation value will change as well. This is what makes these salutations Dynamic. All the salutations rules such as overrides, enabling or disabling a salutation, etc. apply to Dynamic salutations.
Configuring Dynamic Salutations
All Development Roles that are configured in the Veracross Development module will be available for Dynamic salutation configuration. Dynamic salutations allow Development/Advancement options to specify the salutation type per Primary Development role (whether Addressee, Formal, or Informal), which will influence which demographic fields are required in the salutation and which are optional (see “Options” below).
Contact your Account Manager if you are using the Veracross Development module and want to make use of Dynamic salutations. Dynamic Salutations have no extra cost, but enabling the use of any new salutation requires some configuration.
Options
Dynamic salutations can be modified and adjusted to function as needed. Once changes are made to the salutation configuration, a salutation refresh will apply the new configuration to all people / households. Not all salutations are created equal. Salutations of a certain type have some shared configuration options.
For example, the Addressee salutations can be configured to either include or exclude the Middle Name, but the Addressee salutations cannot be configured to exclude the Last Name; Last Name will always be included on an Addressee salutation. Similarly, appending Preferred Name would never be appropriate for a Formal salutation, so it is only optional with Informal salutations.
In other words, the switches seen on this configuration screen are not applicable for every salutation type. Following are three lists (one for each of the three main types of salutations) explaining every field that is either included, optional, or not an option for the salutation type and context. If the field is marked “included,” it will always be a part of that salutation type and context. If the field is marked “optional,” then in Salutation Configuration, the “Options” checkmark for that field will be functional. If the field is marked “not an option,” it will never be a part of the salutation.
ADDRESSEE
| Field | Household | Person | Meaning/use/example |
| Title | Included | Included | Mr., Mrs., etc. |
| First Name | Optional | Included | First name will always be a part of Person Addressee |
| Use Preferred Name | Optional | Optional | Can optionally be used to override First Name |
| Display Middle Name | Optional | Optional | |
| Display Middle Initial | Optional | Optional | |
| Use Middle as Preferred Format | Not an option | Not an option | |
| Last Name | Included | Included | |
| Name Suffix | Not an option | Not an option | |
| Display Maiden Name | Optional | Optional | e.g. “George and Cindy Allen Abbott” where “Allen” is Cindy’s maiden name. |
| Append Preferred Name | Not an option | Not an option | |
| Display Male First | Optional | Not an option | Display male’s name first regardless of Head of Household. |
| Display Female First | Not an option | Not an option | |
| Force Both Names | Optional | Not an option | Typically, for Household salutations where spouses have the same last name, the last name displays once. |
| Append HS Graduation Year | Optional | Optional | Append 2-digit Grad Year, e.g. “John Smith ’09” |
| Append College Graduation Year | Optional | Optional | Append 2-digit Grad Year e.g. “John Smith ’13” |
| Use Four Digit Graduation Year | Optional | Optional | If Grad Year is used, displays 4-digits e.g. “John Smith 2013” |
| Append Attributes | Not an option | Not an option | |
| Acknowledge Alumni Only | Not an option | Not an option |
INFORMAL
| Field | Household | Person | Meaning/use/example |
| Title | Not an option | Not an option | Titles are only used in Formal & Addressee salutations. |
| Display First Name | Included | Included | First name will always be a part of Informal salutations. |
| Use Preferred Name | Optional | Optional | Can optionally be used to override First Name |
| Display Middle Name | Not an option | Not an option | |
| Display Middle Initial | Not an option | Not an option | |
| Use Middle as Preferred Format | Not an option | Not an option | This is only an option for Formal salutations. |
| Last Name | Optional | Optional | |
| Name Suffix | Not an option | Not an option | Suffixes are only used in Formal & Addressee salutations. |
| Display Maiden Name | Optional | Optional | e.g. “George and Cindy Allen Abbott” where “Allen” is Cindy’s maiden name. |
| Append Preferred Name | Not an option | Optional | e.g. “Timothy (Tim) Jones”. Will only work if “Use Preferred Name” is not used. |
| Display Female First | Optional | Not an option | Typically, salutations display the Head of Household first. This option allows female name to always display first. This option is most typically used by All Girls schools. |
| Force Both Names | Optional | Not an option | Typically, for Household salutations where spouses have the same last name, the last name displays once. |
| Append HS Graduation Year | Optional | Optional | Append 2-digit Grad Year, e.g. “John Smith ’09” |
| Append College Graduation Year | Optional | Optional | Append 2-digit Grad Year e.g. “John Smith ’13” |
| Use Four Digit Graduation Year | Optional | Optional | If Grad Year is used, displays 4-digits e.g. “John Smith 2013” |
| Append Attributes | Optional | Optional | Attributes show extra information about a person. For example, “Doug Masters P’09,’13,’13,’13,’18,’21 TR” means Doug is a Parent (P) of kids with graduation years of ’09, ’13, ’18 and ’21 as well as a Trustee (TR). |
| Acknowledge Alumni Only | Optional | Not an option | In households where one spouse is an Alum and the other is not, this switch drops the non-alum from the salutation. |
FORMAL
| Field | Household | Person | Meaning/use/example |
| Title | Included | Included | Mr., Mrs., etc. |
| Display First Name | Optional | Not an option | First name will never be a part of Person Formal |
| Use Preferred Name | Optional | Not an option | Can optionally be used to override First Name |
| Display Middle Name | Optional | Not an option | |
| Display Middle Initial | Optional | Not an option | |
| Use Middle as Preferred Format | Optional | Not an option | When the “preferred name” and “middle name” are the same text, this setting is optional for HH salutations. The format is different depending on gender. For males, the format is {first initial}. {middle} {last}. For females, the format is simply {middle} {last}. |
| Last Name | Included | Included | The “Display last name” switch is not functional as it is only optional in Informal salutations. |
| Name Suffix | Included (in specific scenarios) | Not an option | The Head of Household’s suffix alone will display in a Household salutation only if the Salutation is configured to display first names (see “Display First Name” above) unless the Head of Household’s title is “Dr.” and the suffix is “M.D.” as that would be redundant. For example: “Mr. John Abbott Esq. and Mrs. Eleanor Abbott”. Suffix will never be a part of any Person formal salutation. |
| Display Maiden Name | Optional | Not an option | e.g. “George and Cindy Allen Abbott” where “Allen” is Cindy’s maiden name. |
| Append Preferred Name | Not an option | Not an option | |
| Display Female First | Optional (in specific scenarios) | Not an option | If the Head of Household is male and the spouse is female; and if the spouse and head of household have different last names or if the spouse is a Dr; then the switch is optional for household salutations. Example 1: “Dr. Eleanor Abbott and Mr. John Abbott” because the female spouse is a Doctor. Example 2: “Mrs. Emily Dryden and Mr. Charles Pierce” because they have different last names. If Emily and Charles shared the last name “Pierce”, the “display female first” switch would not be functional in a formal salutation and their HH salutation would have the Head of Household name display first. |
| Force Both Names | Optional | Not an option | Typically, for Household salutations where spouses have the same last name, the last name displays once. |
| Append HS Graduation Year | Optional | Optional | Append 2-digit Grad Year, e.g. “John Smith ’09” |
| Append College Graduation Year | Optional | Optional | Append 2-digit Grad Year e.g. “John Smith ’13” |
| Use Four Digit Graduation Year | Optional | Optional | If Grad Year is used, displays 4-digits e.g. “John Smith 2013” |
| Append Attributes | Not an option | Not an option | The detailed attributes would never be appropriate for a formal salutation, so this switch is not functional for formal salutations. |
| Acknowledge Alumni Only | Not an option | Not an option | Acknowledging an alumnus/a only would never be appropriate for a formal salutation, so this switch is not functional for Formal salutations. |
For more information on configuring salutations, see the Salutations Overview article.