The educator running Saturday’s homeschool science lab needs four things from the roster: who’s coming, how to reach the parent if the session is canceled, which kids are on a member rate or a scholarship, and a list in an order she can check off at the door. The standard program roster in Altru gets her the first item reliably. The rest usually takes some extra work.
This guide covers what the built-in roster is good for, where it falls short, and how to build a roster that includes contact details, the email used at registration, price types, and a predictable sort order.
What the standard roster is (and isn’t) built for
Altru’s program roster is meant as a quick attendance list for a scheduled program on a given date and time. It works well for a docent who just needs a headcount. It is not built to be a flexible report, so you’ll find limited control over which columns appear and how rows are ordered.
Your options for changing the standard roster itself depend on your Altru version and any report customizations your organization has had done. If you’re not sure whether a column can be added, check the roster’s available options in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before promising staff a change. In most cases, the faster path is to stop trying to bend the canned roster and build your own from a query.
Build a roster query instead
A query on program or event sales gives you control over every column and the sort order. The exact query view names vary, so look for the one that covers program registrations or scheduled program sales, then start with a small set of fields and add to it once the basics are right.
Fields worth including
- Program name, date, and start time so one saved query can serve every session; filter on these at run time.
- Purchaser name and, if you record them, attendee names. These are often different people, especially for youth programs.
- Phone and email from the constituent record, so staff can call about a cancellation or a weather delay.
- Price type (adult, child, member, scholarship, chaperone). Instructors use it to see who is on a member or scholarship rate and who may need different handling.
- Quantity per order, so a family of five doesn’t look like one person.
- Order or sales channel (web, phone, front desk) if it helps staff troubleshoot “I bought this online” conversations.
- Notes or special requirements, if you capture allergies or accessibility needs during registration.
Getting the order right
Pre-registered program lists don’t always come out in an order that’s useful at the door. A query lets you set the sort explicitly. Pick one convention and use it everywhere: last name then first name is easiest for check-in, while registration date is better if you’re tracking a waitlist or capacity cutoffs. If attendees and purchasers are both on the list, sort by purchaser last name so families stay together.
Which email belongs on the roster?
This trips people up. The email a parent typed into an online registration form is not always the email that ends up as the primary email on their constituent record. If the person already existed in Altru, the order may have matched to an older record with an outdated address, or the new address may have been stored as a secondary email.
Before you build cancellation messages around the roster, test this with a few of your own web registrations in a sandbox or a test program:
- Register with an email that differs from the one on an existing constituent record.
- Look at where that address lands: on the order, as a new email on the record, or nowhere.
- Add whichever field actually holds it to your roster query.
If the registration email isn’t reliably stored anywhere you can query, that’s worth raising with Blackbaud support, and it’s also a reason to keep an eye on duplicate records, since mismatched emails often create them.
Getting the roster to the people who use it
A good query only helps if instructors can reach it without logging into Altru. A few common approaches:
- Export before each session. Run the query filtered to the program date, export to Excel, and email or print it. Simple, but someone has to remember to do it, and late registrations get missed.
- Give program staff query access. Workable for full-time educators who already have Altru logins. Less practical for contract instructors or volunteers.
- Keep one roster template. Save the query with clear names and share it across departments, so camps, workshops, and lectures don’t each grow their own version with different columns.
Whatever you choose, remember the roster now holds phone numbers and emails. Only share it with staff who need contact details, and avoid leaving printed copies at an unattended table.
A shared, always-current roster
When the bottleneck is the export step, Data Bridge can sync an Altru query to Google Sheets. Build the roster query once, and instructors open a sheet that reflects current registrations instead of waiting for someone to send a fresh file. Altru still holds the registration data; the sheet is simply a read-friendly view of your query.
Quick answers
Can I add price type to the standard program roster?
It depends on your setup. If the standard roster doesn’t show it, a custom query that includes the price type field is the reliable route.
Why do purchaser and attendee names differ?
The purchaser is the constituent who paid. Attendee names are only available if your registration process collects them, so check your forms before relying on that column.
