Pledges are where finance and development tend to disagree about the numbers. Development wants to know who committed what. Finance wants to know what has actually come in and what’s still owed. A good pledge report answers both questions. Altru can get you there, though usually through a query you build yourself rather than a report you just open and run.
Start by checking what you already have
Before you build anything, look through the Reports area of your Altru database for anything revenue or pledge related. Reports available to you depend on your version and on whatever your organization has added over the years, so I won’t promise a specific pledge report exists in yours. Two quick checks save time:
- Browse the revenue reports and run anything that looks close against a date range where you know the answer. If the totals match a pledge you remember entering, you may be done.
- Look in shared queries. Someone before you may have already built a “pledges outstanding” query. Check the date it was last changed and the filters before you trust it.
If neither turns up something that fits, a revenue query is the reliable route. It’s also the better choice if you need to export the data, since queries are built for exporting and most canned reports aren’t.
Decide what question the report answers
“Pledge report” can mean three different things, and mixing them is how totals end up wrong:
- Pledges committed: every pledge made in a period, with the original amount. Good for board reporting and campaign progress.
- Pledges outstanding: open pledges with a remaining balance. This is what finance usually means, and what you need for reminder letters or statements.
- Installments due: individual installments coming due (or past due) in a window. This drives monthly follow-up.
Pick one per query. A single query that tries to show commitments, balances, and installments together usually produces duplicated rows, because one pledge with four installments can show up four times.
Building the pledge query
Create a new ad-hoc query using a revenue source view. Then set it up roughly like this:
Filters
- Transaction type equals pledge. This is the filter that separates pledges from payments, orders, and other revenue.
- Date range on the revenue date if you’re reporting commitments, or on the installment date if you’re reporting what’s coming due.
- Balance greater than zero if you want only open pledges. Look for a balance or amount-remaining field in the revenue fields. If you can’t find one that behaves as you expect, compare the pledge amount against payments applied, and confirm with a pledge you know is partly paid.
- Optionally, filter by designation, campaign, or appeal if the report is for one fund.
Output fields
- Constituent name and lookup ID (so you can find the record again)
- Preferred address and email, pulled from the constituent node, if you’ll be mailing or emailing
- Pledge date and pledge amount
- Balance or amount remaining
- Designation, plus campaign or appeal if you track them
- Installment date and amount, only if this is an installments-due query
Field names vary a bit across Altru versions, so search the field list by keyword (“balance,” “installment,” “designation”) rather than hunting through folders.
Check the totals before you export
Run the query and compare it against something you trust: a known pledge total from your finance team, or a handful of donors you can open individually. Watch for:
- Duplicate rows. If a donor appears more than once, you probably added an installment or payment field to a commitments query. Remove it, or summarize instead.
- Write-offs. Pledges that were partly written off may still show the original amount. Decide whether your report should include them and filter accordingly.
- Household versus individual. If pledges sit on household records, make sure your address fields come from the right record, or your mailing will go to the wrong name.
Exporting for pledge forms and statements
Once the query looks right, export the results to a spreadsheet. If you’re producing pledge reminder letters or statements, that export becomes the data source for your mail merge. A few habits help:
- Save the query, don’t rebuild it. Name it plainly (“Pledges outstanding – open balance”) and note the date logic in the description, so the next person knows what it covers.
- Use relative dates where you can (for example, installments due in the next 30 days) so the same query works every month without editing.
- Format money in the spreadsheet, not in the merge template, so balances print as currency.
- Treat the export as a snapshot. As soon as a payment posts in Altru, the spreadsheet is out of date. Rerun before every mailing.
If you can’t get a field you need into the query, or the balance doesn’t match what you see on the revenue record, Blackbaud support can confirm which field reflects the current balance in your version. Testing in a sandbox, if you have one, is the safest way to try filters without touching saved production queries.
Keeping the export current automatically
The weak spot in all of this is the manual export. Someone has to remember to rerun it, and the spreadsheet starts going stale the moment it’s saved. Our Data Bridge syncs Altru query results to Google Sheets, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and other tools. You can point it at the pledge query you built above, so finance and development work from the same current list without passing exports back and forth.
Quick answers
Is there a built-in pledge report in Altru?
It depends on your database. Check the revenue reports first. If nothing fits, a revenue query filtered to pledges is the dependable option and is easier to export.
Why does my pledge query show the same donor several times?
Usually because installment or payment fields are in the output. Each installment becomes its own row. Remove those fields or build a separate installments query.
