Jeff Witchel, an Adobe Certified Instructor for Adobe Illustrator and a frequent contributor to Layers Magazine (which many of you know is one of my favorite resources), has created a video tutorial for the addition of Gradients to type, WHILE keeping the type editable. This is one of those un-obvious Illustrator controls (uses one of my favorite tools – the Appearance Panel) that will help a bunch of you!
http://www.jeffwitchel.net/2012/03/apply-an-impossible-gradient-to-editable-type/