A donor gives $100 online on Tuesday and drops a check in the mail on Thursday. Two weeks later they open two thank-you letters from you, signed by the same director, in the same week. Nobody is upset exactly, but it looks careless, and it costs postage and staff time to produce.
Duplicate acknowledgments in Altru almost always trace back to one of a handful of causes. Fix the cause and the duplicates mostly stop. For the specific case of “one letter covering several gifts,” there is no single obvious switch, so this article also covers practical ways to consolidate.
First, figure out which kind of duplicate you have
Pull the last batch of letters that went out twice and look at the underlying revenue. You will usually find one of these patterns:
- Two gifts, two letters. The donor made two separate gifts in the same acknowledgment cycle, and each revenue record got its own letter. Altru did what it was set up to do.
- One gift, two letters. The same revenue was acknowledged twice, usually because a letter was produced but the revenue was never marked as acknowledged, or someone also sent a manual letter outside the normal process.
- Two records, one person. The donor exists as two constituent records (often one created by an online form and one created at the desk or from a check). Each record got its own letter.
- Household overlap. One spouse gave and the household was also addressed, or each household member was set up to receive a letter for the same gift.
- Membership plus donation. A member renewed and added a donation in the same transaction, and both the membership letter and the donation letter fired.
Each one has a different fix, so it is worth an hour of looking before changing anything.
Stop the “same gift twice” problem
This is the easiest to fix and the most embarrassing to leave alone. The usual culprit is the acknowledgment status on the revenue. If letters are produced and the status is not updated afterward, the next run picks up the same gifts again.
Agree on one way letters get produced, and make the “mark as acknowledged” step part of it, not an afterthought. If someone on staff writes a personal note for a major gift, they should still mark that revenue as acknowledged in Altru so the standard letter run skips it. A handwritten card that Altru does not know about is a duplicate waiting to happen.
A simple safeguard: before each letter run, query revenue that was already acknowledged in the past 30 days and compare it against the list you are about to send. Anything on both lists needs a second look.
Clean up duplicate constituents
If the same person is getting letters on two different records, no letter setting will solve it. Merge the records, and then look at where the second record came from. Online gifts and walk-up gifts are the common source, especially when the email or address on file does not match what the donor typed. Run a duplicate check regularly rather than only when a donor complains, and decide which staff are allowed to create new constituent records at the point of sale.
Sort out household and membership rules
For households, decide whether a gift from one person is thanked to that person or to the household, and set it consistently. Mixed practice is what produces two envelopes to the same address.
For combined membership and donation transactions, decide whether you want one letter or two. Many organizations prefer a single letter that thanks the member for renewing and for the additional gift. That usually means choosing one letter as the “winner” for combined transactions and making sure the other is suppressed or marked acknowledged at the same time. How cleanly this works depends on how your letters are assigned to revenue, so test it with a few sample transactions before your next run.
One letter for several gifts
This is the harder ask. When a donor gives three times in a month, many development offices would rather send one letter listing all three gifts than three separate letters.
We are not aware of a simple built-in setting in Altru that rolls multiple gifts from one constituent into a single acknowledgment letter. Your configuration may offer more than we expect, so confirm with Blackbaud support or test in a sandbox before deciding. In the meantime, these approaches work:
- Acknowledge on a schedule, not daily. Running letters weekly or every two weeks means more of a donor’s gifts land in the same run, where you can catch and combine them.
- Group in the merge, not in Altru. Export the letter data, sort by constituent, and use a spreadsheet or mail merge setup that produces one letter per constituent with each gift listed. It is a few extra minutes per run, but it is predictable.
- Flag repeat donors before the run. A query of constituents with more than one unacknowledged gift tells you exactly who needs a combined letter. Handle those few by hand and let the rest go out normally.
- Mark every included gift as acknowledged. Whatever method you use, every revenue record covered by the combined letter needs its status updated, or the next run sends the leftovers.
For tax purposes, check that a combined letter still lists the date and amount of each gift and any goods or services received. Your finance team or auditor should sign off on the format.
Write the rule down
Duplicates come back when the process lives in one person’s head. A one-page note covering how often letters run, who marks revenue as acknowledged, how combined membership and donation transactions are handled, and when to send a combined letter will save the next person from rediscovering all of this. Review it once a year, or whenever a donor mentions getting two letters.
Quick answers
Why did a donor get a letter for a gift we already thanked them for?
Most often the revenue was never marked as acknowledged after the first letter, or a personal note was sent outside Altru. Check the acknowledgment status on that revenue record.
Should we delete the extra letter from the donor’s record?
Only if your process allows it. It is usually better to leave the history accurate and fix the cause, so you can see how often it happened.
