Every January the same email arrives: “Can you send me a summary of what I gave last year? My accountant needs it.” Answer it one donor at a time and you lose a week. Send everyone a year-end giving statement in the first weeks of the year and most of those emails never get written.
Altru can produce annual statements. The hard part is the layout. The standard output is fairly rigid, and organizations often want things it doesn’t show well, like which fund each gift went to. Below is how to decide which route to use, how to build the data so the statement is right, and what to check before anything goes in the mail.
Decide what the statement has to say
Settle the content before you open Altru. Most of the frustration with annual statements comes from finding out halfway through that the tool can’t show something you assumed it would. A useful statement usually has:
- The donor’s name and address as they should appear for tax purposes. Household or individual is a decision you need to make, not a default to accept.
- One line per gift: date, amount, and payment type if you want it.
- The designation for each gift (annual fund, capital campaign, education, restricted gifts). Donors who split their giving often care about this more than the total.
- A total for the calendar year.
- Tax language: your organization’s legal name and EIN, plus a statement about whether goods or services were provided in exchange.
The last point needs care at a museum or zoo. Memberships, event tickets, and gala packages usually carry benefits, so they aren’t fully deductible the way a straight gift is. Decide with your finance office or tax advisor which revenue types belong on the statement and how to word the benefit disclosure. Don’t let the software make that call for you.
Option 1: Use Altru’s built-in annual statement
Altru includes a revenue annual statement you can generate for a date range and a selection of constituents. If it covers what you need, use it. It’s the least work and the numbers come straight from revenue records.
Test it first with a small selection of donors you know well: someone with a single gift, someone with gifts split across several designations, a household where both spouses gave, and a donor whose membership also had a donation added on. Compare each statement with the revenue on their record. If the layout is missing something you need, such as the fund designation for each gift, find out now and not after you’ve printed 2,000 copies.
Exactly which fields and sections you can change depends on your Altru setup. To find out, test in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support whether a given field can be added. Don’t assume it can.
Option 2: Build it from a query and a mail merge
When the standard layout falls short, most administrators build their own. It takes longer, but you control every line.
- Create a revenue query limited to the calendar year and to the revenue types you agreed should appear. Include the constituent’s lookup ID, name, address, and addressee/salutation, plus revenue date, amount, and designation.
- Filter out what shouldn’t be there. Typical exclusions are written-off pledges, refunded or reversed transactions, and anything your finance office flagged as non-deductible. If pledges are involved, decide whether the statement shows payments received or amounts committed. For tax purposes it’s normally payments.
- Export to a spreadsheet and sort by constituent, then by date.
- Merge into a Word template that repeats the gift lines for each donor. A letter-style merge prints one record per page, so a gift table that varies by donor usually means a directory-style merge or a short macro. Whoever owns your letter templates has probably done this before.
- Add the total per donor in the spreadsheet before merging, so the figure on the page matches what you checked.
The query is the part to keep. Save it, give it a clear name, and next year you only change the date range.
Common problems
Households versus individuals
If spouses give separately but share an address, decide whether they get one combined statement or two. A combined statement looks tidier, but it can confuse donors who file separately. Whichever you choose, check a few households by hand before the full run.
Duplicate constituents
A donor with two records gets two statements, each with half the total. That generates exactly the call you were trying to prevent. Run a duplicate check on your donor list before you produce anything.
Soft credits and gifts from organizations
Gifts made through a family foundation or donor-advised fund generally aren’t deductible for the individual, even if you soft-credit them. Keep those off individual statements, or label them clearly as recognition only.
Late-posted December gifts
Checks dated December 31 that arrive in January are a perennial headache. Make sure everything is posted and batches are committed before you run the statements, and confirm with finance which date applies.
Email or mail?
Emailed statements are cheaper and easier for donors to forward to an accountant. Mailed statements reach older donors and anyone without a good email address on file. Many organizations email the statement to everyone with a valid address and mail the rest. The merge data is the same either way. Only the delivery changes.
Whichever you choose, record that the statement went out, as an interaction or a communication record on the constituent. Next January, when someone says they never got one, you’ll be able to check.
Quick answers
Do we have to send annual statements?
Generally, no. Donors need written acknowledgment for larger gifts, and many organizations already send one per gift. An annual statement is a courtesy that saves donors and staff time. Confirm the specific requirements with your tax advisor.
Can the statement show fund designations?
A query-and-merge statement can, because designation is just another column. Whether the built-in statement can show it depends on your configuration, so test it before you rely on it.
