The best planned gift prospect at a museum or garden is rarely the person with the biggest single gift. It is usually the retired member who has renewed at the same level for fifteen years, volunteers on Thursdays, and gives a modest annual gift every December. Those people are already in your Altru database. The work is finding them in a list of tens of thousands of constituents.
Altru is built for admissions, membership, and annual giving rather than for formal major or planned gift pipelines, so you won’t find a dedicated planned giving module. What you do have is years of transaction history attached to constituent records, and that history is exactly what planned giving research runs on. Below is how to turn it into a short, defensible prospect list.
Start with loyalty, not wealth
Planned gifts come from commitment more than capacity. A bequest costs the donor nothing during their lifetime, so someone on a fixed income can still leave a meaningful estate gift. When you build your criteria, weight these signals heavily:
- Years of consecutive giving or membership. Ten or more years of unbroken support is the strongest single indicator.
- Consistency over size. Many small gifts across many years beats one large gift.
- Multiple kinds of involvement. Member plus donor plus volunteer or event attendee.
- Age or life stage, where you legitimately know it. Long-tenured members often skew older, but don’t guess at ages you haven’t collected.
- Self-identification. Anyone who has mentioned a will, asked about legacy giving, or checked a box on a survey.
Build the queries in Altru
Constituent queries are the main tool here. Rather than trying to write one perfect query, build a few simple ones and compare the results.
1. Long-tenured members
Query constituents with membership history going back a set number of years who are still current or recently lapsed. If your membership data was migrated from an older system, check whether the original join dates came across. A “member since” date that resets at migration will make your most loyal people look new.
2. Consistent donors
Query revenue for donations (not ticket or membership revenue) and count distinct giving years per constituent. Smart fields are useful here if your organization already has ones for lifetime giving, first gift date, or number of years given. If you don’t have them, ask whoever administers Altru whether adding them makes sense. They make this kind of research repeatable instead of a one-time spreadsheet exercise.
3. Engaged non-donors
Some of the best prospects are long-time members who have never made a separate donation. Pull members with long tenure and no donation revenue. They clearly value the institution and have simply never been asked for anything beyond their dues.
4. Anyone who has raised the subject
If staff record legacy conversations as notes, interactions, or constituent attributes, query for them. If there is no consistent place to record this, fix that first. Pick one attribute (for example, “Planned giving interest” with a few defined values) and tell everyone who talks to donors to use it.
Combine and score outside Altru, then bring the results back
Exporting the query results to a spreadsheet is the practical way to combine signals. Give each constituent a simple point score: points for years of giving, years of membership, volunteer activity, and expressed interest. Resist the urge to build something elaborate. A score from one to ten that a development director can explain in a sentence is more useful than a weighted model nobody trusts.
Before you share the list, clean it up:
- Remove deceased constituents and anyone marked do-not-solicit.
- Collapse households so you don’t approach two spouses separately.
- Check for duplicate records. A long-time donor split across two records can look like two moderate donors and fall below your cutoff.
Then record the outcome in Altru, not just in the spreadsheet. A constituent attribute or similar marker for “planned giving prospect” lets you query the group later, exclude them from inappropriate appeals, and track who has been contacted. Whether Altru’s fundraising features in your configuration support assigning prospects to a staff member or tracking cultivation steps varies, so check your own setup or ask Blackbaud support before designing a process around it.
Where outside research helps
Wealth screening services and public records can add context, such as real estate holdings or other philanthropic giving, but they are optional for planned gifts. For a small shop, a focused list of 50 to 150 loyal constituents will do more than a screened file of thousands. If you do screen, append the results to the records as attributes so they live alongside the giving history.
Keep the list alive
Save your queries and rerun them once or twice a year. New people cross the tenure threshold every year, and others lapse or pass away. A recurring review keeps the list current without starting over.
Finally, remember that a prospect list is the beginning, not the result. The next step is a personal conversation, a mention of legacy giving in the member newsletter, or a simple “Have you included us in your will?” reply card. People who say yes often tell you they already have, which is the best reason to start looking for them in your data now.
Quick answers
Does Altru have a planned giving module?
Not a dedicated one. You work with constituent records, revenue history, queries, smart fields, and attributes. Organizations with large planned giving programs sometimes manage cultivation in a separate fundraising system.
How far back should the queries look?
As far as your data reliably goes. Ten years is a common threshold for “long-term,” but if your Altru history only starts at migration, factor in any legacy data you kept from the previous system.
Should I include members who give only through dues?
Yes. Long membership tenure on its own is a meaningful signal, and these members are often the least-asked group in the database.
