A longtime member moves across town, buys two tickets online, and types her new address into the checkout. Six weeks later, her renewal notice goes to the old house. Nobody did anything wrong at the desk. The new address simply never made it onto the constituent record your mailings pull from.
This happens a lot with online sales, and it usually comes down to one of three things: the purchase matched an existing record but the address on the form didn’t replace the primary address, the purchase didn’t match at all and created a second record, or the new address landed somewhere your mailing queries don’t look. Each one has a different fix, so it pays to figure out which you’re dealing with before changing anything.
Figure out what actually happened to the address
Pick five or six recent online buyers you know have moved (staff, board members, and volunteers make good test subjects) and look them up in Altru. For each, check:
- How many constituent records exist for this person? If you find two, the online order created a new record instead of matching the old one. That’s a duplicate problem, not an address problem.
- If there’s one record, what addresses are on it? Look at whether the new address was added as an additional address, replaced the primary, or isn’t there at all.
- Which address is marked primary, and which one do your mailing queries use? A correct address that isn’t primary can be invisible to a renewal mailing.
Exactly how Altru handles an incoming address on a matched online transaction depends on your web form setup and matching configuration, and it isn’t something we’d want you to take on faith from a blog post. The cleanest way to confirm is to run a test purchase with a known constituent and a deliberately changed address, ideally in a sandbox or with a test constituent in production that you clean up afterward. If the result surprises you, Blackbaud support can tell you whether a setting controls it in your version.
When the problem is duplicates
Online orders are a common source of duplicate constituents. People type “Bob” instead of “Robert,” use a work email, or add an apartment number the old record didn’t have, and the match fails. The new address is then sitting on a brand-new record, while the original record, with the membership and giving history, keeps the stale one.
The fix is a merge, keeping the record with the history and carrying over the newer address and email. Before you merge, decide which address wins. The most recent online purchase is usually a better signal than an address entered years ago, but not always: a gift purchase shipped to someone else, or a ticket bought by a relative, can put the wrong address on the right person.
When the address is on the record but not primary
This one is easy to miss because the data looks fine when you open the record. Build a constituent query that lists people with more than one address, and if your address fields include a start or date-added value, sort so the newest non-primary addresses rise to the top. Scan the list and update the primary where it’s clearly a move. Leave a note on records where you’re not sure, and reach out to the person if the relationship matters, like a major donor or a long-term member.
It’s also worth checking your mailing and renewal queries. If they filter on primary address only, that’s correct for most purposes, but you want to know it, so you’re not surprised the next time someone says “I updated it online.”
Make it a routine instead of a cleanup project
Address drift builds slowly, so a small recurring check works better than an annual purge. A setup that holds up well:
- A weekly query of new online constituents. Records added in the past seven days that came in through a web transaction, using whichever date-added and source fields your queries can see. Compare names and emails against existing records and merge obvious matches while the order is still fresh in everyone’s mind.
- A monthly multiple-address review. The query above, limited to records touched by online sales in the last month.
- A pre-mailing check. Before any renewal or appeal mailing, run your list against the National Change of Address service through whatever vendor you already use, and update Altru from the results.
- A clear rule for staff. When someone at the desk says they moved, the address gets updated as primary right then, with the old one marked previous instead of deleted. Keeping history helps when you’re untangling a merge later.
Reduce bad addresses at the source
Some of this is prevention. Ask for an address online only when you need one (memberships and donations, usually not general admission), label the field clearly as the mailing address, and, where your form setup allows it, require the fields you’ll actually use, such as ZIP code. Fewer optional, half-filled address fields means fewer partial addresses competing with good ones on the record.
Where Social Good fits
The checks above work with Altru alone. Where we help is on the duplicate side: Deduper finds duplicate constituent and email records in Altru and helps you fix them, which is often where a “lost” online address turns out to be sitting.
Quick answers
Should an online address always overwrite the one on file?
Not automatically. Gift purchases and shared family accounts can put a different person’s address on an order. Review before promoting it to primary, at least for members and donors.
Is it safe to delete old addresses?
Generally it’s better to keep them and flag them as former or inactive rather than delete them. That history helps confirm identity when you’re deciding whether two records are the same person.
