Running a visitor or member survey is easy. The hard part is getting the answers back next to the person who gave them, so that “would you renew?” or “how did you hear about us?” can actually drive a list, a segment, or a decision. That is where a lot of survey projects stall: the responses live in a spreadsheet in someone’s downloads folder, and nobody connects them to constituent records.
This guide covers how to plan a survey around your Altru data, where the answers should end up, and the customization limits worth knowing before you start.
Start with the decision, not the questionnaire
Before writing a single question, write down what you will do differently depending on the answers. A few examples:
- “If lapsed members say price was the reason, we will test a lower entry level next spring.”
- “If first-time visitors heard about us from social media, we will move ad budget there.”
- “If members want evening events, programming will add two.”
Every question that does not feed a decision like these is a question you can cut. Shorter surveys get more completions, and you will have less to map back into Altru later.
Decide where the answers live in Altru
This is the step to settle before launch, because it determines how you word the questions. Altru gives you a few general places to store information about a constituent, and each suits a different kind of answer:
Constituent attributes
Best for structured answers you will want to filter on later: preferred visit time, interest areas, “how did you hear about us,” willingness to volunteer. If an attribute uses a fixed list of values, write your survey’s multiple-choice options to match that list exactly. Free-text answers that do not match a code table are hard to query.
Notes or interactions
Better for open-ended comments and for recording that a survey happened at all. They are readable by staff on the constituent record but not very useful for building segments.
Communication preferences and contact details
If your survey asks people to opt in to a newsletter or confirm an email address, treat that as a contact update, not a survey answer. Route it to whoever maintains email and solicit codes, so the change is reflected where your marketing lists actually pull from.
Altru’s options for configuring attributes and code tables vary by how your database was set up, so review the attribute types and code tables you already have before inventing new categories. Too many one-off attributes from a single survey can clutter records for years.
Choosing a survey tool
Altru is not primarily a survey platform, and its native options for building and customizing questionnaires are limited compared with dedicated tools. If you are unsure what your version supports (conditional questions, custom layouts, branding), ask Blackbaud support or test in a sandbox before planning around it.
A common approach is to build the survey in a dedicated tool and treat Altru as the place results land. If you go that route, look for:
- Hidden fields or URL parameters so you can pass the constituent’s Altru lookup ID into the survey link. This is the single most useful feature for matching responses later.
- Clean export to CSV with one row per respondent.
- Answer options you can lock to match your Altru code values.
Sending the survey to the right people
Build the recipient list from an Altru query rather than a hand-picked export. A few audiences that tend to produce useful answers:
- Recent visitors: constituents with a daily sales or advance sales transaction in the last week. Ask while the visit is fresh.
- Lapsed members: memberships that expired in the last 60 to 90 days without renewing. Keep it to two or three questions.
- New members: joined in the last month. Ask what made them join, which tells you which benefits to promote.
- Group sales contacts: after their event, ask about booking and on-site experience.
Include the lookup ID in your query output so every survey link can carry it. Also exclude anyone who received a survey recently; one survey per person per season is a reasonable ceiling.
Bringing results back into Altru
- Export responses with the lookup ID column intact.
- Clean the file: drop partial responses you will not use, standardize capitalization, and confirm each answer maps to an existing code value.
- Match on lookup ID first. Only fall back to name and email for responses without an ID, and review those by hand. Importing on loose matches is a common way to create duplicate constituent records.
- Import to attributes or notes using whatever import process your team already uses, and run a small test batch before the full file.
- Spot-check a handful of records in Altru to confirm the values landed where you expected.
Anonymous surveys skip all of this. That is a fine choice when you only need aggregate opinions, but decide it up front: you cannot add identity back after the fact.
Using what you collected
Once answers are stored as attributes, they behave like any other constituent data. You can filter queries by them, add them to renewal or appeal segments, and report on them alongside revenue. A member who said they care about education programs can get a different renewal message than one who comes for exhibitions. That kind of segmentation is the real payoff, and it only works if the answers made it into Altru in a consistent, queryable form.
Quick answers
Should every survey answer go into Altru?
No. Store what you will query or act on. Aggregate opinions and long comments can stay in the survey tool’s reports.
How often can we survey members?
Aim for no more than once or twice a year per person, and keep a record of who was asked so your queries can exclude them.
