Sooner or later a board member, a finance director, or a grant officer asks for a report Altru doesn’t have. Maybe it’s attendance by ZIP code next to membership revenue, or a one-page monthly summary with your logo on it. The standard reports come close but not quite, and someone remembers that the last place they worked used Crystal Reports for everything.
Before you buy a report writer, it helps to understand where Altru’s data actually lives and what that means for custom reporting.
The constraint that shapes everything: Altru is hosted
Altru runs in Blackbaud’s hosted environment. You don’t have a SQL Server sitting in your building, and in general you don’t get a direct database connection the way you might with an on-premise system. That’s the main reason tools like Crystal Reports, which were built to connect straight to a database, don’t plug into Altru the way people expect.
So for most organizations, custom reporting comes down to one question: how do you get the right data out of Altru, reliably, into something that can format it? Once you frame it that way, the options get much clearer.
If you’re not sure whether your account has any custom report upload or direct data access option, ask Blackbaud support directly. Offerings and permissions can vary, and it’s better to hear it from them than to assume either way.
Your realistic options, from simplest to most involved
1. Stretch the built-in reports further than you think
Many of Altru’s standard reports take parameters for date ranges, programs, sales methods, and more. Before writing anything custom, list exactly what the requester needs and check whether a standard report with different parameters already covers most of it. Often the “custom” part is just a different grouping that someone can add in a spreadsheet afterward.
2. Build an ad-hoc query and finish it in Excel
This is where most Altru custom reporting really happens. Queries let you pull constituents, memberships, revenue, sales, and attendance with the filters and output fields you choose, including smart fields for things like lifetime giving or membership counts. Export to Excel, then use pivot tables and charts for the layout.
Tips that save time later:
- Name queries for the report they feed, not for what they contain. “Board Monthly – Membership Revenue” is easier to find in a year than “Memberships v3.”
- Keep output columns stable. If you add or reorder columns, every pivot table built on that export can break.
- Save the Excel file as a template with the pivot tables pointed at a data tab. Each month you paste the new export into that tab and refresh.
3. Use Crystal Reports on exported data
Crystal can work with Altru, but not as a live database report. Organizations that use it successfully usually treat Altru as the source of a file, not a connection:
- Build a query in Altru with exactly the fields the report needs.
- Export it to a consistent file name and location (CSV or Excel).
- Point the Crystal report at that file as its data source.
- Each reporting period, re-export to the same file name and refresh the report.
This gives you Crystal’s formatting strengths: grouped subtotals, page headers, and printable layouts that look the same every month. The tradeoffs are real, though. Someone has to run the export by hand every time, a renamed or reordered column will break the report, and you need a person on staff who knows Crystal. If that person leaves, the reports often stop with them.
4. Use a modern BI or spreadsheet tool instead
The same file-based approach works with Power BI, Looker Studio, Tableau, or plain Google Sheets. These tools are generally easier to hand off than Crystal, produce interactive dashboards rather than static pages, and can refresh from a shared file or spreadsheet. If you’re choosing a reporting tool fresh, it’s worth comparing them against Crystal before committing, especially if the audience reads reports on screen rather than on paper.
How to decide
- Printed, pixel-exact reports for finance or auditors: Crystal on exported data is a reasonable fit, if you have someone who knows it.
- Monthly board or leadership numbers: a query plus an Excel template is usually enough and easiest to maintain.
- Dashboards people check every week: a BI tool or Google Sheets fed by a regularly refreshed data source.
- One-off questions: an ad-hoc query and a quick pivot table. Don’t build a permanent report for a question asked once.
Whatever you choose, the weak link is almost always the manual export step. Reports that depend on someone remembering to run a query on the first Monday of the month tend to go stale quietly.
Removing the manual export
That export step is the part Data Bridge handles. It syncs Altru query results to Google Sheets and other tools, so a sheet, or a Looker Studio dashboard built on that sheet, stays current without anyone downloading and re-uploading files. You still design the query in Altru; Data Bridge just moves the results where your reporting tool can read them.
Quick answers
Can Crystal Reports connect directly to the Altru database?
Generally no, because Altru is hosted by Blackbaud. Confirm with Blackbaud support for your account, but plan on working from exported query data.
Do I need a separate report writer at all?
Often not. Queries, smart fields, and an Excel template cover most custom reporting needs. A dedicated tool earns its place when you need consistent print formatting or live dashboards.
