A donor hands over $500 and says, “Put $300 toward the new elephant habitat and the rest wherever you need it most.” That’s one gift with two designations. Whether Altru handles it cleanly depends almost entirely on where the gift gets entered: in back-office revenue, at the point of sale, or through a web form.
Below is how each entry point tends to behave, what to do when one of them won’t let you split, and how to keep your designation reporting accurate either way.
Start with the entry point, not the gift
Altru records donations in a few different places, and they don’t all offer the same options:
- Back-office revenue entry (adding a payment or pledge on the constituent record, or through a revenue batch). This is the most flexible path, and where a split between designations is most likely to be supported.
- Sales orders (daily sales at the desk, advance sales over the phone). A donation added to a sales order is usually treated as a line item with its own designation.
- Web forms. Online donation forms are typically set up with a designation, or a short list of designations for the donor to choose from, configured on the form itself.
Exact behavior can vary with your configuration and Altru release, so before you train staff on anything below, test it in your sandbox or confirm with Blackbaud support. That’s a few minutes of work, and it beats finding out during year-end reconciliation.
Splitting a gift in back-office revenue
When the gift comes in by mail, by check, or through a development officer, enter it as revenue on the donor’s constituent record (or in a batch if you’re keying several). In this workflow you can generally add more than one designation to a single payment and assign an amount to each, with the amounts adding up to the gift total.
A few habits that keep this clean:
- Confirm the amounts sum to the total before saving. A split that’s off by a few dollars is easy to miss and annoying to chase later.
- Record the donor’s own words in a note on the revenue record. “Donor asked for $300 to habitat, remainder unrestricted” settles questions a year from now.
- Use batches for volume. If year-end mail brings in a stack of split gifts, a revenue batch lets someone review every split before it posts.
Splitting a donation inside a sales order
This is where most teams get stuck. A guest buying admission says, “And add $50, half to conservation and half to education.” The donation line on a sales order usually carries a single designation, and there may be no option to split that one line.
The practical workaround is to add two donation lines to the same order, one per designation, each with its own amount. The guest still pays once and gets one receipt. In reporting, it shows up as two donations on the same order rather than one split gift, and for most designation reports that’s fine.
Where it gets awkward:
- Acknowledgments. If acknowledgment letters go out per donation, the donor may get two thank-yous for what felt like one gift. Check how your acknowledgment process groups donations from the same order.
- Gift counts. Two donation lines can count as two gifts in reports that tally number of gifts. If your board sees “number of donors” or “number of gifts,” know which one each report actually counts.
- Two lines to the same designation. Sometimes a guest wants two separate amounts going to the same fund, such as a gift in memory of each grandparent. Some screens won’t accept the same designation twice in one gift. Combine the amount into one line and record the tribute details in notes or a tribute record, or enter them as separate gifts if each one needs its own acknowledgment.
If desk staff need to split donations often, write the two-line method on a card at the register. Otherwise seasonal staff will put the whole amount on one designation and leave a note asking someone to fix it later.
Web forms: plan for one designation per gift
Online donation forms in Altru are generally built around the donor picking a single designation per gift. If you’re unsure whether your form allows more than that, open it in your sandbox and try. Common ways to work within the limit:
- Offer a general fund option and let the development team reallocate gifts when the donor’s intent is clearly spelled out in a comment field.
- Build separate forms per campaign when a specific project needs its own clean revenue stream.
- Follow up personally on larger gifts where the donor wrote “split between X and Y” in a comment. Adjust the designations in the back office, then note the change on the revenue record.
Whatever you choose, make sure someone actually reads the comment field. Donor instructions sitting in an unread field are how restricted money ends up in the wrong fund.
Keep your designation reports honest
Since split gifts can reach Altru in different shapes (one gift with two designations, or two donations on one order), build a revenue query that shows designation, amount, and the originating transaction side by side. Run it monthly. It shows how split gifts are actually landing, and whether one entry point is creating extra cleanup.
Where Social Good fits
All of the methods above work in Altru without extra software. If the online donation experience is the weak spot, Checkouts replaces Altru web forms with a branded, mobile-friendly checkout for tickets, memberships, and donations, with data writing back to Altru. If you’re evaluating it, ask us to walk through how a donation with your designations would post, and compare that against your reporting needs.
Quick answers
Can a single sales order include donations to different designations?
Usually yes, by adding a separate donation line for each designation. Test it in your sandbox to confirm how it posts and is acknowledged.
Is a split gift better than two separate gifts?
For donor counts and acknowledgments, one split gift is usually cleaner. For campaign reporting, either works as long as the designation amounts are correct.
