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Just recently I was talking with a nonprofit client who asked what seemed like a simple question: "Why can't I search in any field like Google?"

It was a great question, and it led me to some interesting discoveries.

Google and other search engines do a great job of indexing most of the Internet. But they do have a huge advantage- time is on their side. You may not realize it, but changes made to a website's content can takes days (or even weeks) for the pages to show up in the search engine results. The reason is that it takes a VERY LONG time to index all words/phrases in anything (and this includes web pages, documents, and databases).

We could offer full indexing on every field but we know its impractical for users to have to wait for a change to included in their index. We always have to make a trade-off between how much data we index and the speed of entering and retrieving fundraising and donor data. Since the vast majority of times you need to find someone it is by first or last name, phone # or address, DonorPerfect indexes these fields.

However, searching doesn't have to be limited to these fields. Did you know that you can add more fields to our standard search screen?

For example, if you wanted to search on the TYPE of donor (Individual, Company, Organization, etc.), you can add this field to the Search screen.

To add a field, simply click on Utilities, Parameters, Donor Search Fields, and you can add up to 10 additional search fields to the Entry Search Screen.

Of course, you can always use a filter as well, but adding commonly used search fields will make it much easier to search...without waiting...for the results.