Altru’s built-in reports cover the daily questions, but sooner or later someone asks for a membership trend line beside attendance, or a board dashboard that refreshes itself. That’s when people start asking whether Altru data can go straight into Excel or Power BI. OData is the usual answer: Blackbaud’s platform can publish the results of an Altru query as an OData feed that Excel and Power BI know how to read. Whether that option is available and switched on for your site is worth confirming before you plan a project around it.
Below is how the connection works in general terms, where it tends to break, and how to set it up so it keeps working after the person who built it moves on.
What OData actually gives you
OData is a standard way for a web application to publish data as a URL that other tools can read. In Altru’s case, the thing being published is a query. You don’t get direct access to the database. You get the rows and columns of a specific ad-hoc query, filtered the way that query is filtered, with the security of the account that requests it.
That has two practical consequences:
- Your report is only as good as your query. If the query is missing a field, Power BI can’t add it. Design the query for the report, not the other way around.
- Each feed is one query. A dashboard that combines memberships, ticket sales, and donations will usually pull three or more feeds and join them in Excel or Power BI on a shared key, such as the constituent lookup ID.
Setting up the connection
- Build a dedicated query. Create a new ad-hoc query just for the report rather than reusing one that staff edit for other work. Name it clearly (for example, “PBI – Membership transactions – do not edit”) so nobody “fixes” it later and breaks the feed.
- Keep the output flat and lean. Pick only the fields you need. Include IDs and dates in plain form so they can be used as join keys and date filters. Avoid output fields that return one row per related record unless you actually want that grain.
- Get the query’s OData link. Altru queries can expose a web feed address. Where that option appears and what it’s called can vary by Altru release, so if you don’t see it, check Blackbaud’s current documentation or ask Blackbaud support whether OData is available on your site.
- Connect from Excel or Power BI. In Excel, use the “From OData Feed” data source in Power Query. In Power BI Desktop, choose the OData feed connector. Paste the link and sign in when prompted.
- Shape the data in Power Query. Set column types (dates as dates, amounts as decimals), rename columns, and remove anything you don’t need before loading.
Where it usually goes wrong
Authentication
This is the most common sticking point. Altru sign-in runs through Blackbaud ID, and desktop tools don’t always handle that the way they handle a simple username and password. If Excel keeps rejecting credentials, don’t assume the link is wrong. Confirm with Blackbaud support which authentication method your site supports for OData requests before spending an afternoon on it.
Scheduled refresh in the Power BI service
A report that refreshes fine in Power BI Desktop can still fail once published, because the cloud service has to sign in on its own. Test a scheduled refresh early, with a small query, before building a full dashboard on top of it. If it won’t refresh unattended, you’ll be refreshing by hand from Desktop and republishing, which is workable for a monthly board pack and painful for anything daily.
Whose credentials the feed uses
The feed returns what the signing-in user is allowed to see. If it’s tied to a staff member’s personal login, the report stops when they leave or their password changes. Where your policies allow it, use an account set aside for reporting with only the access the queries need, and document who owns it.
Large or slow queries
Pulling every transaction since opening day on each refresh is slow and puts load on Altru. Filter the query to a rolling window (for example, the last 24 months) and keep older history in a static file you append to occasionally.
Someone edits the query
Renaming or removing an output field will break the steps in Power Query that reference it. Lock down who can edit reporting queries, or at least keep a note in the query description listing the reports that depend on it.
Excel or Power BI?
Excel is the better choice when one or two people need a refreshable table or pivot and already live in spreadsheets. Power BI makes sense when several queries need to be joined, when leadership wants a shared dashboard, or when you need visuals beyond what a pivot chart offers. Either way, the Altru side is the same: well-built queries with stable fields.
If OData isn’t a fit
Some organizations find the authentication and refresh setup more trouble than it’s worth, especially without an in-house analyst. A simpler route is to land Altru query results somewhere your tools already read. Data Bridge syncs Altru query data to Google Sheets, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and other tools, so a sheet updated from Altru can serve as the source for a shared report without anyone running manual exports.
Quick answers
Can I write data back to Altru through OData?
Treat the feed as read-only. It publishes query results for reporting; changes to records still happen in Altru.
Can I connect to Altru’s full database instead of individual queries?
Not through the query feed. You work with the queries you build, so plan one query per subject area and join them in your reporting tool.
