services wanted Appeal for Expert Help!

[Carl Morris]

Hi everyone,

I am sorry if this is not in the right forum, but I could not find a suitable one.

My name is Carl Morris and I am a professional pool player, but this job brings some spare time with it - spare time I like to use to help charities. I am profoundly deaf myself and would not be where I am today were it not for the help of charities, hence the reason I like to give something back.

Basically, over the last couple of years, I, along with another volunteer, have raised over £120,000 for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, the NDCS and now Against Breast Cancer, but it is getting to the stage where the database is growing and is getting unmanageable. I am manually doing a lot of work that I know a properly created database on Filemaker would so in a fraction of the time. As a result, I cannot physically put any more time into it and because of this fact, I cannot raise any more than approximately £50,000 per year.

While I've no doubt I can learn over time, what would help is if I had the aid of an expert who can help me to get things moving quicker by either helping and advising me, or helping to build it. While it is complex for me, I presume that for an expert it would not.

If you feel you can help, please do so. We will give you full recognition of the work you have done.

Many thanks,

Carl Morris

[Lee Smith]

Hi Carl, and welcome to the Forum.

This is the BEST place for your post.

Do you have a wish list of what you want in the database? Take a look at FileMaker's site, they have some free solutions, in fact, have a look at this link, Link it is to a list of resources available for non-profit activities. If it were me, I would call them and discuss what I needed, and perhaps they have a finished solution that they would provide me.

If it ends up that you do need to develop this solution for yourself, then start by learning the program. This would include reading the manuals, working through the tutorials, and investigating the example files, to see what makes them tick. There are some training videos, but I'm not sure what is available for the hearing impaired. There are several after market books that can be helpful too.

Take a look at the "TOOLS OF THE TRADE" Topic Area, and specifically the [color:blue]Resources and [color:blue]Product Reviews topics for some of the books, videos, etc that have been recommended in the past.

FYI, when looking for the Products, it only shows two because to the default time for showing the ages of post. In order to see the older ones (i.e. version 10, etc), you will have to adjust the "DETAILS" [color:blue] "You are viewing Posts from:" "Show Posts Age" from [color:blue] "Default" to [color:blue] All. [color:blue]DETAILS is located below the list of posts.

HTH

Lee

[David McQueen]

Do post a wish list.

There are a lot of talented people on this forum who may be able to help you out in one way or another. The more they know, the better they may help.

I suggest a simple list of things you do now, especially the things that are eating up time or that you have to do manually, followed by a list of the things you need to do but can't.

[Carl Morris]

Hi guys, thank you ever so much for your kind words.

I am sorry for the delay as I have been away on honeymoon, but while away my father unfortunately passed away after a long illness, but he is at peace now and in no more pain.

When I have read a bit more on the book "Filemaker Pro 11 - The Missing Manual", I will have a better idea of what I can and cannot do, and how best to implement them all.

I will drop a message on here once I know, and hopefully people will be able to help me to help charities more efficiently..

Best regards,

Carl

[Carl Morris]

Hi everyone,

Well, I've been reading the book, "The Missing Manual" and I have to say it is very informative. However, it is a 'generalised' teacher and there are any questions I have, that I can't ask a book!

The most important question I have at the moment is this;

My current database has two sets of addresses - one for their home address, and the other for work. The problem is this;

For example, next year I am doing a challenge where I am doing a pool entertainment exhibition in every one of England's 43 counties, starting on 9th July 2011 and ending on 20th August 2011. Therefore, in my database of 1,000+ records, 43 of them are confirmed venues who are hosting their counties leg and who have donated the deposit to charity.

(I have a field called ECPC_Confirmed in which confirmed ones are numbered 1 whereas the rest are a zero so I can pull these up)

I need to write them all a letter once a month, to see how they are doing in their fundraising efforts (each county has pledged to raise a minimum £1,000, to make a grand total of £43,000).

I can create a template letter no problem, and put the following;

"Dear <<name_first>> <<name_last>>,

I am writing to see how the fundraising efforts are going in your aim to raise £1,000 for your exhibition in <<county>> on <<ECPC_Date>> etc etc..

The problem is, The <<county>> takes it from the WORK address field and not the home address field.

This poses the question for me - should I actually have two separate sets of addresses, or should I just have one, with a field that says whether it is a home address, work address or 'Other' address?

This way, there will just be one and solve the problem of creating templates only for some to be missing the information.

What are your thoughts? What would you do?

This would save me a lot of time and enable me to do a better job..

Carl