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kmartin
kmartin
First Timer
July 31, 2026

How are you setting up your evergreen saved searches for your first time donor automations?

  • July 31, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 34 views

Hi all. We’re setting up welcome series automations (and automations in general) in EveryAction for the first time, and every time I think I have the right search criteria and activist code naming conventions figured out, I realize a hang-up that could screw things up. The whole automation process has been stressing me out. 

So, what do your evergreen saved searches look like for your first time donor welcome series? What criteria are you using to ensure they’re not being targeted more than once, and to avoid hiccups in general? How are you handling removing activist codes that get auto-assigned, and what activist code naming conventions are you using? I’m basically at step 1 still.

Thank you!

2 replies

rachel moody
rachel moody
Community Manager
August 3, 2026

Hey ​@kmartin! I’m going to move this to the EA Discussion thread as I think it’s a better place since you want to hear from some other EA customers on what they do. 

Rachel at Bonterra
    Lark Valente
    Product Pro
    August 17, 2026

    Hello! Ours is pretty basic as far as criteria go, but here’s what we use as the initial entry step. Note that ours is set to “contacts can only enter once” mode.  

    1. Include both FHH and individuals who first contribution date is yesterday/today (we use the “Add Contacts” feature to grab both lists)
    2. Add both FHH and individuals who made an attributed contribution yesterday/today. If you don’t include that, any sort of workplace giving folks will get left out. 

    We then let the automation do more of the filtering via steps, rather than trying to think through every possible filter from the jump.

    First, it assigns an activist code “New Donor -- added via automation.” As far as naming conventions go, that’s the easiest way for us to understand where it came from. 

    Then, it assigns a follow-up to myself to vet them -- that way, I can manually remove folks who made a purchase (i.e. not a donation) or who have a weird giving situation. It also lets us pull out folks who made previous gifts via an attribution, since their contribution count would be at 0 (ex: people who exclusively give through their workplace program). While it would be nice not to have to monitor it constantly, this is the best way we could set it up! It also allows us to do any merging of profiles. As far as the hang-ups you mention, our answer really is to just have a human put eyes on it before anything external sends.  

    Important bit: When I “vet” a person, I leave the activist code on their profile if I want them to stay in the automation. If I want them removed, I go to their activist codes and manually remove it. Before each automated email is sent, we set up a search that solely checks for that activist code. If it’s ever removed (i.e. we decided we don’t want them to receive new donor comms), they immediately end the automation. 

    We also layer other searches, giving them different treatment if their gift amount is over X dollars, etc. Plus, we have a general “Remove from Automations” activist code that we can manually apply to any profile at any time. Every single automated email that goes out includes a step to search for those folks and remove them. That way, if a donor passes away, becomes a board member, tells us they hate emails, etc we can remove them at will. :) 

    Hope this helps! Highly recommend a training with ​@peter ritcheson if that’s doable for your organization. He’s been great at helping us make it less stressful. 

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