A board member pledged $5,000 at the spring gala and has paid $1,000 so far. Six months later the same person calls to buy event tickets, and whoever answers has no idea there’s a balance. Nobody wants to chase a donor at the ticket counter, but your development team would very much like to know when that person is in front of you, or about to be.
Altru tracks pledges and their balances in revenue. What it doesn’t do well is put that balance in front of the people who need to see it. This guide covers how to find outstanding pledges reliably, the ways you can make them visible on the constituent record, and what to be careful about.
Start with a query you trust
Every flag you set up later depends on one accurate list. Build a revenue query for pledges that still have a balance. In most databases that means filtering on:
- Transaction type is pledge
- Pledge balance (or amount remaining) is greater than zero
- Optionally, the designation, appeal, or event the pledge belongs to, if you want separate lists for gala pledges versus capital campaign pledges
Add output fields for the constituent’s name and lookup ID, the original pledge amount, the balance, the pledge date, and the next installment date if your pledges use installment schedules. Then spot-check five or six records against what you know about them. If a pledge was written off or adjusted, make sure it isn’t showing up as still owed. A bad list makes a flag worse than no flag.
Save it as a constituent-based selection too. You’ll use that selection for everything below.
Ways to make the balance visible
There isn’t a single “outstanding pledge” alert switch that we know of in Altru. If you’re not sure whether your version has something closer to that, ask Blackbaud support or check the current help documentation before building a workaround. Here are the approaches that work with standard features.
Option 1: A constituent attribute
Create an attribute category such as “Open pledge balance” (yes/no, or a short text value with the amount). Attributes show on the constituent record, so anyone who opens it will see the flag.
The catch is upkeep. An attribute doesn’t update itself when a payment comes in. You’ll need a routine: export the selection from your pledge query, compare it to who currently has the attribute, add it for new pledgers and remove it for anyone who has paid in full. Monthly is usually enough for development purposes. Weekly is better if front-of-house staff rely on it.
Option 2: A smart field
Smart fields calculate values on a schedule rather than in real time, which makes them a good fit here. If your Altru has a revenue smart field that can total pledge balances per constituent, you can use it in queries, lists, and segments without maintaining anything by hand. Test what it returns in a sandbox or against a few known donors before you depend on it, especially for split or multi-designation pledges.
Option 3: A note on the record
For a handful of high-value pledges, a dated note works fine: “Gala pledge, $4,000 remaining, contact Development before soliciting.” It’s manual, but it carries context an attribute can’t, like who owns the relationship. Don’t use notes as your main system if you have more than a few dozen open pledges. They go stale fast.
Event pledges and the history screen
Pledges made at fundraising events can be harder to see. They’re often entered separately from the event registration, so staff looking at the event or at the person’s recent activity may see the registration and miss the money still owed.
Before building anything, check how your organization actually records these. Are gala pledges entered as pledges with the event’s appeal or designation, or as something else? Do they show up where your staff normally look on the constituent record? If they don’t, the fix is often consistent data entry: the same appeal, the same designation, the same naming, so your query can find them and a person scanning the revenue history can recognize them.
Who should see the flag
Decide this before you build anything. A few questions worth settling with your development director:
- Does the front desk need to know at all? Many organizations decide admissions staff should never bring up a pledge. In that case the flag is for development and membership staff only, and an attribute visible to everyone may be too much.
- Should open pledges suppress other appeals? Excluding your pledge selection from annual fund mailings and renewal upgrade asks is often the most useful thing this list does.
- Who follows up, and when? A flag with no owner just sits there. Tie the list to a person and a regular reminder schedule.
A simple monthly routine
- Refresh the pledge balance query and check the total against your finance team’s pledge receivable figure. If they’re far apart, figure out why before going further.
- Update attributes (or confirm the smart field has refreshed).
- Send development a short list of pledges with a missed or upcoming installment.
- Remove the flag from anyone who paid in full or whose pledge was written off.
None of this is complicated, but it only works if someone does it on a schedule. The query is the hard part, and you only build it once.
Quick answers
Will Altru automatically alert staff when a constituent has an unpaid pledge?
Not that we’re aware of as a standard feature. Confirm with Blackbaud support for your version. Attributes, smart fields, and saved queries are the practical workarounds.
Should I flag every unpaid pledge, or only overdue ones?
Usually overdue ones, or pledges above a set amount. A donor paying on schedule doesn’t need a warning on their record.
