A corporate sponsor moves offices. Someone on your team updates the organization record in Altru with the new street address, marks it primary, and moves on. Three months later the sponsorship invoice, the gala invitation, and the annual report all go to the old building, because each of them was addressed to a person at that company, and those people still have the old address on their own records.
That gap is the whole problem. In Altru, an organization and the individuals connected to it are separate constituent records. Changing one doesn’t reliably change the others. This article covers what to expect, how to find every contact who needs the update, and how to keep it from happening again.
Why the new address doesn’t follow the organization
Altru links an individual to an organization through a relationship (often flagged as a contact, primary contact, or employee, depending on how your database is set up). The relationship tells Altru that the two records are connected. It doesn’t make them share an address. Each individual keeps their own address list, and whatever address was entered when that person was added stays there until someone changes it.
Households behave differently. When you change a household member’s address, Altru can offer to update other household members as well. Whether a similar prompt exists for organization contacts in your version, and under what conditions it appears, is something we’d confirm rather than assume. The quickest way to check: in a sandbox or test record, add a new address to an organization that has a couple of linked contacts and watch whether Altru offers to copy it. If you don’t have a sandbox, Blackbaud support can tell you what your current release does. Plan as though you’ll be updating contacts yourself, and treat any built-in prompt as a bonus.
Step 1: Decide what address a contact should carry
Before copying anything, settle one question: should a contact’s record hold the organization’s address at all?
- If you mail contacts at work (sponsorship paperwork, invoices for group visits, corporate membership renewals), the new office address belongs on each contact, ideally as a Business address type so it doesn’t overwrite a home address.
- If some contacts are also individual members or donors, their primary address is probably their home. Add the business address as a secondary address instead of replacing the primary, or you’ll send their personal membership card to an office they may have left.
- If a contact has left the company, the right fix is ending the relationship, not giving them the new address.
Writing this down as a short rule saves a lot of judgment calls later. Something like: “Org contacts get the org’s address as a Business address. Only make it primary if the person has no home address on file.”
Step 2: Pull the list of affected contacts
For one organization with two or three contacts, just open the relationships on the organization record and update each person. For anything bigger, use a query.
- Build a constituent query of individuals whose relationships include the organization in question. If you track several types of relationship (contact, employee, board liaison), decide which ones should get the address and filter to those.
- Add output fields for each person’s name, primary address, address type, and the relationship type, so you can see at a glance who still has the old address.
- If you’re handling a batch of organizations that all moved (say, after a data review), add the organization’s primary address to the output too. Any row where the contact’s business address doesn’t match the organization’s address is a candidate for an update.
Save the query. You’ll reuse it.
Step 3: Make the update
For a short list, update each contact record by hand: add the new address with the correct type, set primary only if your rule says so, and mark the old business address inactive or end-date it rather than deleting it. Keeping the old one with an end date preserves history, which matters when someone asks why a gift acknowledgment went to the wrong place last year.
For a longer list, look at whether your Altru import tools let you add addresses to existing constituents in bulk. Import options and permissions vary by database, so test a two-record file first and check both records afterward: confirm the address type, the primary flag, and that nothing was duplicated. A bad bulk import of addresses is far more work to unwind than updating thirty records by hand.
Watch for duplicates while you’re in there
Address cleanups tend to surface duplicate constituents: the same contact entered once from a group sales booking and again from a donation. If you find two records for one person, merge them before updating the address, otherwise you’ll fix one record and the old address will keep showing up on mail pulled from the other.
Step 4: Make it a habit, not a cleanup project
- Add it to the address-change checklist. Whoever updates an organization’s address also opens its relationships and updates the contacts in the same sitting. It’s a two-minute step when done right away.
- Run the mismatch query on a schedule. Once a quarter, or before any big mailing, run the query from Step 2 and fix whatever it turns up.
- Check before corporate mailings. Sponsorship renewals and corporate membership notices are where a wrong address costs the most. Run the query before those go out, not after the returns come back.
Quick answers
Will changing the organization’s address update its contacts automatically?
Don’t count on it. Organization and individual records keep their own addresses. Test in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support whether your version offers a copy prompt, and plan to update contacts yourself either way.
Should I delete the old address?
Usually not. Mark it inactive or give it an end date so the history stays on the record.
What if a contact’s home address is their primary?
Leave it primary and add the organization’s address as a secondary Business address. That way personal mail and work mail both go to the right place.
