Your First Query

All that structured data you've learned about—contacts, individuals, tags, gifts—becomes powerful when you can filter and find exactly what you need. That's what queries do. Think of them as saved searches with superpowers.

What Queries Actually Are

A query is a set of criteria that filters your database. Instead of scrolling through thousands of contacts hoping to find what you need, you tell Virtuous: "Show me all contacts where X is true."

For example: "Show me all households tagged 'Major Gift Likely' who gave over $1,000 last year but haven't given yet this year."

That's a query. It might return 47 contacts—exactly the list you need for a targeted outreach campaign.

Running a Saved Query

The easiest way to start is with queries someone else has already built. Your team likely has several saved queries for common needs.

That's it for running existing queries. Now let's build one from scratch.

Building Your First Query

We'll start simple. Let's find all contacts with the "Do not call" tag—useful if you want to exclude them from a phone outreach list.

Step 1: Create a New Query

From the Queries page, click New Query. You'll be asked to choose a Query Type. Select Contact Query—this searches at the contact level (households, organizations).

Step 2: Add Your Criteria

You'll see a criteria builder. Click Add Criteria and set up:

Step 3: Run and Review

Click Run Query. Review the results to make sure they look right. If the number seems off (way too high or too low), double-check your criteria.

Step 4: Save It

If you'll need this list again, click Save Query. Give it a clear name like "Contacts - Do Not Call" and choose a folder if your team uses them.

A Slightly More Complex Example

Let's try something more useful: finding lapsed donors in your caseload who might be worth a personal call.

Notice how we combined three criteria with AND. All conditions must be true for a contact to appear in results.

Understanding Operators

The operator is the comparison you're making. Here are the most common ones:

Operator	Use When
Equals	Exact match. "Contact Tag Equals 'Major Gift Likely'"
Does Not Equal	Exclude matches. "Contact Tag Does Not Equal 'Deceased'"
Greater Than	Numbers above a threshold. "Life to Date Giving Greater Than 1000"
Less Than	Numbers below a threshold. "Last Gift Amount Less Than 100"
Contains	Partial text match. "Contact Name Contains 'Smith'"
Is Empty	Field has no value. "Email Is Empty" (finds contacts without email)

Query Types Matter

When you create a new query, you choose a type. The two you'll use most:

Contact Query: Searches contacts (households, organizations). Use this for most donor lists, mailing lists, and outreach campaigns.

Gift Query: Searches individual gifts. Use this when you need to analyze giving patterns, find gifts within a date range, or look at specific campaigns/projects.

What Else Can You Do?

Once you've run a query, you can:

• Export the results to Excel or CSV
• Bulk Actions: Add tags, create tasks, or update fields for everyone in the results
• Save the query to run again later
• Customize columns to show exactly the fields you need

Queries are the foundation of targeted outreach, reporting, and data hygiene. The more comfortable you get with them, the more value you'll extract from Virtuous.