“Head of household” is a phrase that comes up constantly in museum and zoo development offices, usually when a mailing goes out addressed to the wrong person or a membership card lands in the name of a teenager instead of the parent who paid. In Altru, the concept exists, but it doesn’t always go by that name, and it doesn’t control as much as people assume. Knowing what the designation actually drives is the difference between a quick fix and a week of chasing the wrong setting.
The short version
Altru organizes people into households: a household is its own record that groups individual constituent records together. Within a household, one member can be flagged as the primary contact. That flag is the closest thing Altru has to a “head of household,” and it is what most admins mean when they ask how to set one.
You typically change it from the household record itself, by editing the household’s members and marking the person who should be primary. Because screen labels can differ between Altru releases and depend on your security role, the safest way to confirm the exact steps for your database is the Blackbaud Altru help documentation or a quick test on a sandbox record. If you don’t see an option to change the primary contact, it’s often a permissions issue rather than a missing feature, so check with whoever manages your Altru system roles.
What the primary contact does (and doesn’t) control
This is where most confusion starts. Setting a primary contact is useful, but it isn’t a master switch for everything household-related.
Usually affected
- Who represents the household in household-level views and some outputs, such as household name formats and contact information pulled for the household.
- Queries and exports built to return the primary contact, which is how many teams pull one name and address per household for mailings.
Often not affected
- Membership records. A membership has its own list of members, and its own primary member, separate from the household. Changing the household’s primary contact does not automatically change who the membership is “for.” If the card or renewal notice is going to the wrong person, look at the membership record too.
- Revenue. Gifts and payments are recorded against the constituent who made them. Changing the household’s primary contact doesn’t move past revenue to a different person.
- Addressee and salutation text that was set manually. If someone typed a custom name format on a record, it can stay as-is after the primary contact changes. Review name formats after any change.
If you aren’t sure whether a given output in your database reads from the household’s primary contact, the membership’s primary member, or the individual constituent, test it: change one sample household, rerun the report or query, and compare.
Common situations and what to do
A couple where the wrong spouse is primary
Change the primary contact on the household, then open any active membership and check its primary member separately. Finally, look at the household’s name formats so letters read the way the family expects.
A child or grandparent ended up as primary
This often happens when someone other than the bill payer was entered first, for example at the front desk during a family visit. Set the adult who manages the relationship as primary. If the record was created as a duplicate during that same visit, merge first, then fix the household, so you aren’t correcting the same family twice.
A death, divorce, or separation
Handle these with more care than a simple flag change. Depending on the situation you may need to mark a constituent as deceased, remove a member from the household, or create a new household for one of the people. Changing the primary contact alone won’t stop mail to someone who should no longer receive it. Write down your organization’s process for these cases so it’s handled the same way each time, and confirm the right Altru steps with Blackbaud support if your team hasn’t done it before.
One person, no household
Not every constituent belongs to a household. If someone is an individual record with no household, there’s nothing to set. Only create a household when you actually need to group people, since empty or single-member households add clutter to queries.
Keeping it consistent going forward
- Decide what “primary” means for you. Many organizations use “the adult who pays and wants the mail.” Whatever you choose, write it into your data entry guide.
- Build a check query. A household query that returns the primary contact alongside the membership primary member makes mismatches easy to spot. Review it before a renewal mailing or year-end appeal.
- Fix duplicates before households. Duplicate constituents are the most common reason households look wrong. Cleaning them up first saves rework.
- Train desk and phone staff. Many household errors start at point of sale when a new record is created quickly. A one-line rule about who to enter first prevents a lot of cleanup.
Quick answers
Is there a field literally called “Head of household” in Altru?
Altru generally uses the idea of a household’s primary contact rather than that exact phrase. If your organization needs a separate “head of household” label for reporting, a constituent attribute is a common workaround, but confirm it fits your reporting before adding one.
Can a household have two primary contacts?
No, it’s designed as a single primary. If you want both adults named on mail, handle that through the household’s name formats rather than the primary flag.
Will changing the primary contact break past reports?
It shouldn’t change historical revenue, but any report that pulls the current primary contact will show the new person going forward. Run a sample report before and after on a test household if timing matters.
