A visitor calls to say they just got someone else’s eTicket confirmation. Or a donor forwards an acknowledgment letter thanking a stranger for a gift. Either way, an email from Altru went to the wrong person, and you need to do two things: contain this one, and find out why it happened so it doesn’t repeat next week.
Containment comes first. The cause can wait an hour.
The first hour: contain it
- Stop any related sends. If the email came from a scheduled or bulk communication, pause it before it goes out again. If it was a one-off transactional email (a confirmation or receipt), check whether the same record is queued for anything else, like a reminder or post-visit message.
- Figure out what was in the message. Write down exactly what the wrong recipient saw: name, address, order details, membership level, gift amount, ticket barcodes. That list decides how serious this is.
- Neutralize anything usable. If the email carried scannable tickets or a membership barcode, treat those as compromised. Void or exchange the tickets and reissue them to the correct customer so the copies in the wrong inbox won’t get anyone through the gate. Confirm with a test scan if you can.
- Contact both people. Ask the unintended recipient to delete the message (a short, polite note is enough). Let the intended customer know what happened and send them the correct confirmation. Most people are understanding when you tell them before they find out on their own.
- Loop in whoever owns privacy at your organization. Depending on what was exposed and where your patrons live, there may be notification obligations. That’s a call for your privacy lead or counsel, not the box office. Don’t guess.
Then find the cause
Open the constituent record of the person who should have received the email, then the record of the person who did. In practice, the cause almost always falls into one of a few buckets.
The wrong constituent was attached to the transaction
This is the most common one. At the desk, a cashier searches “Smith,” picks the first result, and completes the sale. The confirmation goes to whichever Smith they picked. Phone sales and group sales are especially prone to it because the customer isn’t standing there to correct the spelling.
Check the transaction itself. If it’s on the wrong constituent, move it or reverse and re-enter it according to your normal correction process, and make sure revenue and any membership tied to it end up on the right record.
Duplicate records with mixed-up emails
Two records for the same person, or two different people merged into one, are a common source of crossed emails. A merge done in a hurry can leave one person’s email address sitting on another person’s record. Look at the email address history on the record if your setup shows it, and ask whoever handles duplicates whether a recent merge touched this constituent.
Household and shared addresses
Spouses, parents and adult kids often share one email address, or a household-level email gets used where an individual’s should. A gift membership is a classic case: the purchaser and the recipient are different people, and the email went to the one you didn’t intend. Check which record your communication is pulling from, the individual or the household, and whether gift purchases are set up so the right party gets the right message.
A query or communication that selects the wrong field
If the bad email came from a bulk send, the problem is usually the query behind it. Common culprits: an output field that pulls a non-primary email, a join that returns a related constituent (like the purchaser instead of the recipient), or criteria that let records through that shouldn’t be there. Open the query, run it, and find the wrong recipient in the results. Then look at which field produced their address.
A typo that happens to be real
Sometimes the email was simply mistyped, and the typo belongs to someone else. “jsmith@” instead of “jsmyth@” is a real inbox. There’s no clever fix for this except getting the address right at entry: read it back on the phone, and have guests confirm it on the screen at the desk.
Keeping it from happening again
- Tighten constituent search at the desk. Train staff to confirm a second detail (ZIP code, phone, or email) before attaching a sale to an existing record. Ten seconds per sale is cheaper than one incident.
- Keep duplicates under control. Run duplicate checks on a regular schedule, and have one trained person approve merges rather than everyone merging as they go.
- Review queries before bulk sends. Before any new communication goes live, spot-check a handful of records in the query results against their constituent records. Look specifically at households, gift memberships and anyone with more than one email.
- Send internal tests. Seed a staff test constituent into each recurring communication so someone on your team sees every send and notices when something looks off.
- Log incidents. Keep a simple list: date, what went out, cause, fix. After a few entries, the pattern usually points to one process worth changing.
Quick answers
Can I recall an email Altru already sent?
Generally, no. Once a message is delivered to an outside inbox, you can’t pull it back. Plan on reissuing anything sensitive and asking the recipient to delete the original. If you’re unsure what your sending setup allows, ask Blackbaud support.
Should I delete the wrong email address from the record?
Only once you’re sure it doesn’t belong to that person. Sometimes the address is correct and the transaction was attached to the wrong record. Fix the actual error, and add a note on the constituent record explaining what changed and why.
