A new major gifts officer starts on Monday. By Wednesday someone asks why they can’t be picked as the manager on the donors they inherited. In Altru, a prospect manager isn’t a free-text name you type in. It points to a record, and that record has to be set up correctly before Altru will offer it. Once you know the order of operations, adding a prospect manager is quick. Skip a step, though, and the name simply won’t show up in the search.
This guide covers the setup, the actual assignment, and the housekeeping that keeps your prospect portfolios accurate when staff come and go.
What a prospect manager is in Altru
The prospect manager is the staff member who owns the relationship with a prospective donor: they plan the next step, log the interactions, and answer for the ask. Altru’s fundraising tools are built on the same platform as Blackbaud’s larger CRM, so the idea works much the same way. The manager is a constituent record for the staff person, linked to the prospect’s constituent record.
That detail explains most of the trouble. Your colleague’s Altru login and their constituent record are two separate things. Having a user account doesn’t make someone eligible to manage prospects.
Step 1: Make sure the staff member exists as a constituent
Search for the person as an individual constituent before you do anything else. If there’s no record, create one with their work contact details. If there’s more than one (common with staff who were members or donors before they were hired), merge or clean up the duplicates first. Otherwise you’ll end up with portfolios split across two records and reports that don’t add up.
Step 2: Give them the right constituency
In most Altru setups, the list of people you can pick as a prospect manager is filtered to constituents with a fundraiser or staff-type constituency. If that constituency isn’t on the record, the person won’t appear, even though the record exists.
- Open the staff member’s constituent record and look at their constituencies.
- Add the fundraiser or staff constituency your organization uses, with a start date.
- If you aren’t sure which constituency your configuration expects, look at the record of someone who already appears as a prospect manager and copy what they have.
That last tip works better than guessing. Constituency names and configuration differ between organizations, and the existing working record shows you what your setup actually needs.
Step 3: Assign them to the prospect
Open the prospect’s constituent record and go to the prospect or fundraising information where the manager is set. Search for the staff member, select them, and save. If your organization tracks a primary manager along with secondary or support staff, decide which role this person holds before you save. That choice affects who shows up on portfolio reports.
If the person still doesn’t appear in the search, check these in order:
- The constituency was added to the record you’re searching for, not to a duplicate.
- The constituency’s dates are current (an end date in the past removes them from the list).
- Your own security role lets you edit prospect information. If you can see the field but can’t change it, that’s a permissions question for your Altru administrator.
If all three check out and the person is still missing, take it to Blackbaud support with the constituent’s lookup ID. Configuration details can vary, and they can tell you exactly what your database is filtering on.
When a prospect manager leaves
This is where portfolios get messy. Prospects stay assigned to someone who has been gone for six months, and no one follows up with them.
- End the old assignment, don’t delete it. Keeping the departed manager with an end date preserves the history of who cultivated the donor and when.
- End their fundraiser constituency so they stop appearing as an option for new assignments.
- Reassign deliberately. Before the person leaves, build a query of prospects where they are the current manager. Go through the list with your development director and decide who takes each one. Some prospects should be reassigned and some should be moved back to the general pool.
Ask Blackbaud or test in a sandbox whether your version of Altru supports reassigning managers in bulk. If it doesn’t, plan for record-by-record updates and work from the query list so nothing gets missed.
Keeping portfolios honest with queries
A simple constituent query, filtered on prospect manager and output with the prospect’s name, last interaction date, and giving to date, is the most useful report a development team can have. Run it monthly and look for three things:
- Prospects with no manager at all, especially your top donors.
- Prospects assigned to staff who have left or no longer do fundraising.
- Portfolios that are far larger than one person can realistically work.
Save the query and share it with the fundraisers so each person can check their own list. People notice errors in their own portfolio much faster than an administrator does.
Quick answers
Can a volunteer or board member be a prospect manager?
Usually yes, as long as they have a constituent record with the constituency your setup requires. Many organizations list board members as secondary contacts instead, so primary ownership stays with staff.
Does the prospect manager need an Altru login?
Not to be assigned. They only need a login if they’re going to update records or log interactions themselves.
