A member calls because their confirmation never arrived. A donor wants a copy of last year’s gift details. A teacher needs the parking instructions for a field trip on Thursday. Each of these comes down to one person and one email, and Altru doesn’t make that as obvious as you’d hope.
Altru’s email tools are built around audiences: a selection or query of constituents, a template, and a send. That fits a newsletter or a renewal campaign. It’s awkward for “please email Mrs. Alvarez her receipt.” Below are the realistic ways to handle single emails, what each one costs you, and how to keep a record in Altru whichever route you choose.
Option 1: Send from your regular inbox, then log it in Altru
For a true one-time message, this is usually the fastest and most honest answer. Copy the address from the constituent record (or click it, if your setup opens your mail client), write the email in Outlook or Gmail, and send it.
The catch is that Altru won’t know it happened. If you care about contact history, and most development and membership teams do, add an interaction (or a note, depending on how your organization records contacts) on the constituent record right after you send. Keep it short and consistent:
- Date, and that the contact was by email
- Who sent it
- A one-line summary (“Resent 10/14 membership confirmation; updated mailing address”)
Agree on a standard category or subject format for these so they’re easy to query later. Otherwise you end up with a dozen variations of “emailed patron.”
Good for: answers to questions, apologies, anything personal or unusual.
Weak at: branding, consistency between staff, and anything you’ll need to send again next week.
Option 2: Use Altru’s email marketing with an audience of one
You can point Altru’s email tools at a selection that contains a single constituent. That gets you your branded template, merge fields, and the send logged inside Altru.
In practice it’s a lot of setup for one recipient: building or editing the selection, choosing the template, reviewing, and sending. It makes sense when the message needs to look official, such as a formal acknowledgment, and you already have a template ready. It doesn’t make sense for a quick reply.
Two things to verify before relying on this:
- Email preferences. Marketing sends generally respect a constituent’s opt-outs and solicit codes. If the person has opted out of marketing email, a one-off sent through a marketing tool may be suppressed even though the message is transactional. Test it with a staff record that has the same preferences.
- What your Altru setup actually supports. Email features and permissions vary by configuration and security role. If you’re not sure whether your staff can create single-recipient sends, try it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support rather than finding out at the desk.
Option 3: Resend the email Altru already sent
Many “one-off” requests are really “send me that again”: order confirmations, eTickets, membership confirmations, donation receipts. Depending on how your organization set up web forms and transaction emails, there may be a way to reissue the original message rather than writing a new one. I’m not going to promise where that lives in your instance, because it depends on the sale channel and configuration. Check with whoever built your web forms, or test a resend on a staff purchase.
If a resend isn’t possible, the fallback is Option 1 with the details pasted in, plus an interaction logged.
Notice when “one-off” isn’t one-off
Keep a simple tally for a month of every individual email staff send by hand. Some will be truly unique. Others will repeat:
- Resending tickets or confirmations
- Telling a member their card is ready or their membership changed
- Sending a group the arrival details before their visit
- Thanking a donor for a gift that came in by check
Anything on that list more than a few times a week shouldn’t depend on someone remembering to write it. Usually you can define who should get it with a query: everyone whose group visit is in three days, every gift entered yesterday, every membership upgraded this week. Once the audience is a query, the email can go out on a schedule instead of by hand.
A practical house rule
Teams that handle this well tend to settle on something like:
- Personal or unusual message: send from your inbox and log an interaction.
- Official message to one person, template exists: send through Altru to a one-person selection.
- Same message keeps coming up: stop sending it by hand and automate it from a query.
Write it down, include the interaction format, and show new staff where the template folder is. Most of the problem goes away when people don’t have to improvise.
Automating the repeat cases
For the repeating messages, Social Good’s Email Designer sends automated, branded emails such as eTickets, acknowledgments, renewals, and post-visit follow-ups straight from Altru queries, without manual exports. It won’t replace the occasional personal note from your inbox, but it can take the predictable ones off your staff’s plate.
Quick answers
Is there a “compose email” button on the constituent record?
Don’t count on one that writes, sends, and logs a message in one step. Plan on either your own email program or Altru’s audience-based email tools. If you think your instance has something more direct, confirm it in a sandbox or with Blackbaud support before you train staff on it.
Will an email from Outlook or Gmail show up in Altru?
Not automatically. Log an interaction or note on the record if you want it in the constituent’s history.
