Your marketing coordinator wants to tag donors who are active on Instagram and TikTok. The constituent record in Altru has a place for social media under contact information, but the platforms listed don’t match the ones your audience actually uses, and nobody can find a setting to add a new one. So handles end up in notes, in a spreadsheet on someone’s desktop, or nowhere at all.
This article covers what you can realistically do inside Altru, which workaround holds up best over time, and a few questions worth answering before anyone starts typing handles into constituent records.
First, confirm what your Altru instance allows
Whether you can add a new platform to the existing social media list isn’t something we’d state with certainty for every Altru environment. Some contact-related lists in Altru are configurable code tables that an administrator can extend; others are fixed by Blackbaud. Before building a workaround, spend ten minutes finding out which one you have:
- Look through the administration and code table areas for anything related to social media or online contact types.
- Try adding a test entry on a test constituent and see whether a new platform option is available.
- If you can’t find it, open a case with Blackbaud support and ask directly whether the social media type list can be extended in your version.
If the list turns out to be editable, add the platforms you need, document who owns that list, and you’re done. If it isn’t, use one of the options below.
Workarounds, from best to worst
1. Constituent attributes
Attributes are the most practical way to store information Altru doesn’t have a dedicated field for. You create an attribute category (for example, “Instagram handle” or “TikTok handle”), set it to hold text, and add it to constituent records as needed.
Why this works well:
- It’s queryable. You can pull attributes into constituent queries, filter on them, and export them for a marketing list.
- It’s structured. One category per platform means you never have to guess which network a value belongs to.
- It’s reportable. You can count how many constituents have a handle on file, which tells you whether the effort is worth continuing.
Set up and test attribute categories in a sandbox or on a test constituent first, so you can confirm the data type and how it appears in queries before staff start using it.
2. Repurposing an existing contact field
Some teams put a profile URL into a website-style field or reuse an existing social media type for a different network (“we use the Other slot for TikTok”). It works for a while, then someone new joins and nobody remembers the convention. If you go this route, write the rule down and put it in your data entry guide, but treat it as a stopgap.
3. Notes
Notes are fine for context (“very active on Instagram, shared our gala photos”) but bad for storing the handle itself. Free text in notes is hard to query consistently, and you’ll end up with “IG: @name,” “instagram.com/name,” and “insta – name” for three different people.
Decide on a format before anyone enters data
The field is the easy part. Consistency is what makes the data usable six months from now. Agree on these up front:
- Handle or full URL. Pick one. Handles are shorter and easier to scan; URLs are clickable. Mixing both makes filtering and deduplication harder.
- With or without the @. Small detail, but it matters if you ever match against an export from a social tool.
- Which platforms you’ll track. Limit it to the networks your organization actually posts on and engages with. A field nobody fills in is just clutter on the record.
- Who enters it and when. Front desk staff during membership sign-up? Development staff after a donor meeting? Marketing after an influencer partnership? If no one owns it, it won’t get filled in.
- Where it comes from. A handle the constituent gave you is different from one a staff member found by searching. If that distinction matters to your policies, record it.
Questions worth asking before you start
What will you do with it? If the goal is to identify members who could become ambassadors, or to recognize donors publicly, a handle on the record is useful. If it’s a general “we should have this,” the data will go stale quietly.
Do you have consent? Storing a public handle that someone shared with you is different from researching people’s personal accounts. Check with whoever owns your privacy policy, especially if you plan to tag or mention constituents publicly.
How will it stay current? People change handles and abandon accounts. Unlike email, a bad social handle doesn’t bounce, so you won’t notice it’s wrong. A simple yearly query of records with a handle on file, sorted by when the attribute was added, gives you a list to spot-check.
Quick answers
Can I import social handles in bulk?
If you use attributes, they can generally be included in a constituent import, but test a small file first and confirm the records match correctly before running the full list.
Will handles stored as attributes show up on the constituent record page?
Attributes appear in their own area of the record rather than alongside phone and email. Make sure staff know where to look, or the data will get entered twice in different places.
Should we track follower counts too?
Probably not. Counts change constantly and are rarely worth the maintenance. A handle plus a short note about why the person matters to you is usually enough.
