Every Altru database eventually hits the same fork. One camp wants a constituent record for every person who walks through the door, so nobody is ever “lost.” The other camp wants records only for members and donors, so the database stays clean. Both camps are partly right, and the database ends up reflecting whichever person happened to be at the register that day.
The fix isn’t picking a side. It’s writing down a short set of rules for when a record gets created, what has to be on it, and how contact with that person gets logged afterward. Here’s how to build those rules so they hold up.
Start with one question: will you need to find this person again?
A constituent record earns its keep when your organization will contact, recognize, report on, or serve that person later. If the honest answer is “no,” an anonymous sale is usually the better choice. Altru handles anonymous daily sales without trouble, and attendance still counts.
Applied consistently, that one question sorts most people:
Always create (or match) a record
- Members, including every named member on a household or dual membership, not just the person who paid.
- Donors of any amount, because acknowledgments and giving history depend on it.
- Advance sales and online buyers, since you need a name and email to deliver tickets and handle changes.
- Group sales contacts: the teacher, tour operator, or coordinator, and the organization they book for.
- Event registrants and program participants (camps, classes, rentals), especially if waivers, payments, or follow-up are involved.
- Volunteers, board members, and major prospects, even before any money changes hands.
- Organizations you do business with as funders, sponsors, schools, or partners, with the people who work there linked as relationships.
Usually skip
- Walk-up general admission buyers paying cash or card who don’t ask to join a list.
- Gift shop or cafe customers with no other connection to you.
- Children attending under a parent’s ticket, unless a program requires them on file.
The gray zone
Walk-up guests who give an email for a newsletter, a receipt, or a contest are the hard case. If you’ll actually email them, create the record and capture consent. If the email is going into a spreadsheet nobody opens, don’t create anything. A constituent with no purpose is just a future duplicate.
Minimum data before a record is saved
Set a floor so a new record is useful the day it’s created. A reasonable minimum:
- First and last name, spelled as the person spells it.
- At least one of: email, phone, or mailing address. Email is usually the most valuable for an admissions-driven organization.
- A source or origin, so you know whether they came from the web, the front desk, a group booking, or an event.
- Communication preferences when you collect contact details, so marketing doesn’t email someone who only wanted a receipt.
Write the floor down and train to it. Altru lets you make some fields required, but exactly which fields can be enforced on which forms varies, so test your setup in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before relying on the system to police it.
Search before you add, every time
Most duplicates come from people who meant well. Before creating anyone, staff should search by last name plus email or phone, then by last name plus ZIP code. Partial-name searches catch “Bob” versus “Robert” and maiden names. If two records look close, the rule should be “ask the guest” or “flag it for the database manager,” never “make a new one to be safe.”
Households need their own rule. Decide whether a second adult at the same address gets a separate individual record linked to the household, and stick with that. Mixed approaches make membership and mailing counts unreliable.
When to log an interaction
Interactions record contact that doesn’t show up as a transaction: a phone call, a meeting, a complaint, a site visit, a thank-you call. Altru stores them on the constituent record, which makes them useful only if people log them the same way.
A workable standard:
- Log it if someone else on staff would need to know it happened: donor and prospect conversations, membership disputes, service recovery, accessibility needs discussed, board or volunteer conversations.
- Don’t log routine transactional contact the sale already captures, like “bought tickets” or “picked up will-call.”
- Agree on the categories (for example: call, email, meeting, in-person, complaint) and keep the list short. Ten categories nobody remembers are worse than four everyone uses.
- Write the summary for a stranger. Who, what, the outcome, and any next step with an owner. “Talked to Jane” helps nobody six months later.
Documentation: notes, attachments, and where they belong
Separate interaction history from standing facts. An interaction says “this happened on this date.” A note on the record says “this is true about this person”: prefers a phone call, uses a wheelchair, must not be solicited, give via donor-advised fund. Put standing facts in notes or a dedicated attribute or field so they’re visible and reportable, not buried in an old call log.
Be careful with sensitive information. Don’t paste card numbers, health details beyond what’s operationally needed, or anything you wouldn’t want the person to read if they asked for their record. If your organization stores signed waivers or agreements, confirm with your Altru setup or Blackbaud support how attachments are handled and who can see them.
Put the rules on one page
The policy only works if front-line and back-office staff follow the same version. Keep it to a single page that covers:
- Who gets a record, who doesn’t, and how to handle the gray zone.
- Minimum required data and the search steps before saving.
- Household rules.
- When to log an interaction, the category list, and what a good summary looks like.
- Who owns cleanup when the rules are missed.
Then check that it’s working. A simple query of constituents created in the last 30 days, sorted by who created them and missing email or address, shows quickly where training needs a refresh. Review it monthly for the first quarter, then less often once the habits stick.
Quick answers
Should every ticket buyer become a constituent?
No. Anonymous walk-up sales still count toward attendance. Create records for people you’ll contact or serve again.
Do children need their own records?
Only when a program, membership card, or waiver requires them by name. Otherwise they ride on the adult’s record or the sale.
