Help excluding and including contacts in contribution reports

Question

I'd be grateful for any guidance anyone can offer. The answer may be right in front of me, I realize.

What I'm trying to do:

1. I want to generate a list of contacts for a physical, paper mailing to raise funds.
2. I have a Smart Group (Members new, current, grace), and that is the only subset of contacts that I wish to run this search on.
3. I'd like to find every contact within "Members new, current, grace" who has made a donation up until 4/30/2022.
4. I want to mark/label/identify these contacts, who made a donation up until 4/30/2022 so that I can exclude them from my mailing. But I need the remainder, all those in the group Members New, Current, Grace, who do not fit that category I am excluding, to remain visible and exportable because they are the contacts who should receive the mailing.

My problem is that I can't find a report or search function that lets me choose the necessary variables, and that lets me mark only those within the group that have made a contribution in the specified date range. If I can find something like that, I discover when trying to export that Civi will not allow me to export a column for "contributions."

Civi seems to have lots of options for including contacts, but very few for excluding them by parameter without also excluding from view or export the contacts I actually desire.

Here's what the search logic would look like in plain English:

1. Consider only the smart group "Members New, Current, Grace."
2. Then, display the full contact information for everyone in that group, including a US Postal, physical address.
3. Of this set, identify or label the subset who have made a contribution as recently as 4/30/2022.
4. But, leave me with a report that includes everyone on the list, and does not leave me only with the subset I want to exclude. In other words, display for me: All contacts in Members New, Current, Grace. Do not remove or hide from view everyone who doesn't fit the excluded subset. Allow that data to remain visible, because those contacts are the ones who should receive the mailing.

Thank you to anyone who can guide me. Again, I realize that the answer may be very obvious, and it might just be my brain not seeing it. I have tried, but I'm stuck. Cheers.

Answer 1

1. Search - Advanced Search
2. In the Groups field, put your smart group.
3. In the contributions section, set the received date for <= 4/30/2022
4. Search. From the actions dropdown, make a group out of that.
5. Search - Custom Searches - Include/Exclude
6. In the include group put your earlier smart group.
7. In the exclude field put the group you just made.
8. Click on AND (this is a quirk - we don't care about tags but it wants you to pick AND or OR).
9. Then the results are the contacts you seek.