How to Add Descriptions and Extra Info to Constituents in Altru

Every constituent record eventually collects information that doesn’t fit the standard fields: “Board chair’s spouse, prefers no phone calls.” “Local school district, books field trips through the curriculum office.” “Lent us the 1890s quilt collection.” Staff want somewhere to put that, and in Altru there are a few places it can go. Which one you pick decides whether anyone can find it, report on it, or act on it later.

The short version: use notes for narrative, attributes for anything you’ll want to count or filter, and relationships for anything that’s really about a connection to another person or organization. The rest of this article explains how to choose, and the mistakes that make extra information impossible to use.

Start with one question: will you ever need to pull a list of this?

Before anyone types anything into a record, decide whether the information is something you’ll read or something you’ll search for.

• Read it when you open the record: background, history, preferences, the story of how a donor got involved. That’s a note.
• Search or report on it: “all teachers,” “everyone who volunteers on weekends,” “organizations that sponsor events,” “lenders to the collection.” That needs to be structured data, which in Altru usually means a constituent attribute.

The most common problem we see is the second kind of information stored in the first kind of field. Free-text notes are easy to write and very hard to query reliably. Six months later someone needs a list of all corporate sponsors and the only record of it is buried in paragraphs written three different ways.

Notes: for context a person needs to read

Constituent records in Altru support notes, and notes are the natural home for descriptive information: a summary of who the person or organization is, conversation history, special handling instructions, or anything that only makes sense as a sentence.

A few habits make notes far more useful:

• Use note types consistently. If your configuration has note types, agree on a short list (for example, “Background,” “Stewardship,” “Service issue”) so people can scan and filter by type instead of reading everything.
• Write a one-line title that says what the note is about. “Call” is useless. “Prefers email, no mailed appeals” is not.
• Date-stamp facts that change. “Currently on the education committee (as of fall 2026)” ages better than “on the education committee.”
• Keep sensitive information out unless your policy allows it. Health details, personal conflicts, and gossip don’t belong in a record that front-desk staff can open.

Attributes: for facts you’ll filter, count, or segment

Constituent attributes let you define your own categories and attach them to records. They’re the closest thing Altru has to “custom fields” for constituents, and they’re what you want for anything you’ll later use in a query, a smart field, or a mailing list.

Good candidates for attributes:

• Profession or affiliation (teacher, docent, board member, staff)
• Organization type (school, corporate sponsor, tour operator, foundation)
• Interests or program areas (education, conservation, collections, gardening)
• Special roles (lender, artist, researcher, media contact)
• Communication preferences that aren’t already covered by standard solicit codes

When setting up attributes, pick the data type carefully. A category backed by a fixed list of values (a code table) is much easier to report on than free text, because everyone has to choose “Elementary school” rather than typing “elem,” “Elementary,” and “grade school.” If an attribute only makes sense for a limited time, such as a committee term, check whether your setup lets you record start and end dates on it.

Creating new attribute categories is usually an administrator task, and the exact options available depend on your Altru configuration and security role. If you’re not sure what your version supports, try it in a test environment or ask Blackbaud support before rolling it out to staff.

Relationships: for information that’s really about a connection

“Works at the regional hospital” or “parent of a summer camp participant” is less a description than a link between two records. Altru supports relationships between individuals and between individuals and organizations, and using them keeps the information current on both sides. When the hospital’s contact person changes, you update one relationship instead of hunting through notes on dozens of records.

For organization records in particular, relationships are often the most valuable “extra info” you can add: who your primary contact is, who signs the checks, and who actually shows up to events.

What about organizations specifically?

Organization records take notes, attributes, and relationships the same way individual records do. The extra information people usually want on organizations falls into a predictable set:

• A short description of what the organization does (note)
• Organization type or industry (attribute, from a fixed list)
• How they work with you: sponsor, school group, vendor, partner (attribute)
• Key contacts and their roles (relationships)
• Booking or billing quirks, such as “requires a W-9 before payment” or “always pays by purchase order” (note, ideally with a consistent note type)

A simple rollout plan

1. List the information staff currently keep elsewhere, in spreadsheets, sticky notes, or their own memory. That list is your real requirement.
2. Sort each item into note, attribute, or relationship using the “will we ever need a list of this?” test.
3. Create the attribute categories and code-table values before anyone starts entering data, so you don’t end up cleaning up variations later.
4. Write a one-page entry guide with examples, and share it with everyone who edits records.
5. Build a test query on each new attribute to confirm you can actually pull the list you expected. If you can’t, fix the setup now rather than after a thousand records are tagged.
6. Clean up existing notes gradually. When someone opens a record with a note like “corporate sponsor,” add the matching attribute.

Quick answers

Can I add a brand-new field to the constituent record?
Altru doesn’t work like a spreadsheet where you add a column. Attributes are the supported way to capture custom information. If you need something beyond what attributes can do, confirm the options with Blackbaud support rather than relying on workarounds.

Can I report on information stored in notes?
Sometimes, depending on what your query options expose, but text searches are unreliable. Anything you’ll report on regularly should be an attribute.