“Riverside Elementary,” “Riverside Elementary School,” and “Riverside Elem PTA” are probably the same school. In Altru they can easily be three separate organization records. One has the group sales history, one has the field trip coordinator attached as a contact, and one has a single donation from 2019. Reporting on that school means guessing which record to look at.
Merging those records is mostly straightforward. The hard part is deciding what to merge and cleaning up what the merge leaves behind. This guide covers both, with some notes on where organizations behave differently from individual constituents.
Organizations are constituents, so the merge works the same way
In Altru, an organization is a type of constituent record, just like an individual. The constituent merge that you use for duplicate people generally applies to organizations too: you pick two records, decide which one survives, and Altru moves the history from the duplicate onto the survivor and removes the duplicate.
Two things to keep in mind before you start:
- A merge can’t be undone. Once the duplicate is gone, there’s no button that splits it back out. If you’re not sure two records really are the same organization, don’t merge them yet.
- Permissions matter. Merge rights are often limited to a few system roles. If you can’t find the option, check your security role with your Altru administrator before assuming the feature is missing.
Exactly which fields carry over, and which ones the surviving record keeps when both have a value, depends on your Altru version and merge settings. Before you merge anything important, test with two throwaway organization records in a sandbox or training environment, or ask Blackbaud support how your instance handles conflicting fields.
Is it really the same organization?
Organizations duplicate in messier ways than people do. Before merging, sort out which of these you’re looking at:
- True duplicates. Same organization, entered twice with slightly different names (“The Smith Foundation” vs. “Smith Foundation, Inc.”). Merge these.
- Parent and child organizations. A school district and one of its schools, or a corporation and its local branch. These are different entities. Link them with a relationship instead of merging, or you lose the ability to report on them separately.
- A program or group inside an organization. A PTA, a scout troop that meets at a church, a company’s employee giving club. Decide as a team whether these get their own records. Whatever you choose, apply it consistently.
- An organization entered as an individual. Someone typed “Acme Corp” into the first and last name fields. Check whether your version allows merging an individual into an organization. If not, you may need to recreate the history on the organization record or ask Blackbaud support about converting the record type.
Choosing which record survives
Pick the record you want to keep by looking at what’s attached to each, not by which one has the nicer name. The name can always be fixed after the merge. As a rule of thumb, keep the record that has:
- The most revenue and group sales history.
- Active relationships, especially current contacts.
- Any lookup ID or external ID that other systems or spreadsheets reference.
- The cleanest, most current address.
If the duplicate has a better address or phone number, write it down before you merge. Depending on how your merge settings handle conflicts, the duplicate’s contact info may not carry over the way you expect.
A pre-merge checklist for organizations
- Relationships. List the individuals related to each record (employees, primary contacts, board members). People are often linked to both copies, which can leave duplicate relationships after the merge.
- Primary contact. Note which person should be the primary contact on the surviving record.
- Open group sales. If either record has an upcoming group reservation, check it after the merge to confirm it’s still attached and the coordinator’s details are right.
- Matching gifts and recognition. If either organization is used for matching gift credit or donor recognition listings, confirm those still point to the surviving record afterward.
- Query lists and exports. Static query results or spreadsheets that reference the duplicate’s lookup ID will go stale. Update anything you rely on.
After the merge: the cleanup most people skip
Open the surviving record and review it top to bottom. Common leftovers:
- The same person related twice, sometimes with different relationship types. Delete the extra one and keep the more accurate type.
- Two or more addresses, phone numbers, or emails. Mark the right one as primary and inactivate or remove the rest.
- An outdated organization name. Update it to the official name and, if you track them, add the old variants as alternate names so staff searching for “Riverside Elem” still find it.
- Extra notes or attributes that now contradict each other. Consolidate them.
Add a short note on the surviving record saying what was merged and when. Anyone who later wonders why a 2019 gift shows up on this record will have an answer.
Finding organization duplicates in the first place
Searching by exact name misses most organization duplicates. Better approaches:
- Build a constituent query limited to organizations and sort by name. Duplicates tend to cluster once you ignore “The,” “Inc.,” and “LLC.”
- Run a second pass sorted by address or main phone number. Two records with different names at the same street address are worth a look.
- Check the organizations behind your group sales. Schools and tour operators get re-entered every season by whoever takes the booking call.
Then fix the source: agree on a naming standard (official legal name, no abbreviations, no leading “The”), and make “search before you add” part of how staff create group sales and organization records.
When there are too many to do one at a time
Merging a handful of organizations by hand is fine. Hundreds is another matter, especially after a data import or years of group bookings. Social Good’s Deduper is built to find and fix duplicate constituent and email records in Altru, so you can work through a backlog more efficiently than with one-off searches. The policy decisions above, like what counts as the same organization and which record survives, are still yours to make.
Quick answers
Will merging two organizations combine their revenue history?
In general, yes. The point of a merge is to move the duplicate’s history onto the surviving record. Spot-check giving totals before and after on your first few merges to confirm it behaves as you expect.
Can I merge two organizations into a household?
No. Households group individuals. Organizations relate to people through relationships, not household membership.
Should I merge a company with its foundation?
Usually not. A corporate foundation is often a separate legal entity with its own giving. Keep both records and link them with a relationship.
