A board member asks, “How much is still owed on pledges?” The development director wants the same number per donor, ideally on the constituent record, before a cultivation meeting. Altru tracks pledges and their payments well enough, but getting a clean outstanding balance in front of the right person takes a little setup. Below are the options we see working, from a single total to a per-donor figure staff can see without running anything.
Start with what Altru already stores
When you record a pledge in Altru, it lives in revenue as a pledge transaction with an amount and a schedule of installments. Payments applied to that pledge reduce what remains. So the balance exists as data; the question is where you can see it and how you roll it up.
Two things worth knowing before you build anything:
- Per-pledge balances are easier than per-donor totals. Looking at one pledge and what’s left on it is straightforward. Summing every open pledge for a constituent, or a household, is where people get stuck.
- Smart fields may not cover this directly. Altru’s smart fields are built from a fixed set of types. We are not certain every Altru database offers a smart field type that totals outstanding pledge balances per constituent. Open the list of smart field types in your own database (or in a sandbox) and check before planning around one. If it isn’t there, Blackbaud support can confirm, and the query approach below fills the gap.
Option 1: A revenue query for open pledges
This is the workhorse, and it answers both the board’s question and the per-donor one.
- Create a revenue query and filter on transaction type equal to Pledge.
- Add a filter on the pledge balance field (whatever your query’s field list calls the remaining or outstanding amount) greater than zero. This drops fully paid pledges.
- Output the constituent name and lookup ID, pledge date, original amount, balance, and the next installment date if it’s available in your field list.
- Add the designation or campaign if you report on pledges by fund.
- Sort by balance, descending, so the largest open commitments sit at the top.
For a grand total, export to Excel and sum the balance column, or use the query’s summary options if your version offers them. For a per-donor total, group or pivot by constituent. Spot-check a few rows against the pledge records themselves before you send anything to finance or the board, especially pledges with write-offs or adjustments, which can make a balance look different than staff expect.
Watch for these edge cases
- Write-offs. Confirm whether written-off amounts are excluded from the balance in your data. If not, add a filter or note.
- Households. If pledges are recorded on individuals but you steward at the household level, the per-donor total won’t match what a gift officer expects. Decide which level you report on.
- Past-due versus not yet due. A $10,000 balance due over three years is different from $10,000 that was due last quarter. Add an installment date filter to make a separate “past due” list.
Option 2: Put the number where staff look
The common complaint isn’t that the number can’t be found; it’s that a gift officer shouldn’t have to run a query to see it. A few ways to get closer:
- Use a smart field if one fits. If your database has a smart field type that can total outstanding pledge amounts, set it up, schedule it to refresh, and add it to constituent query output and lists. Remember smart fields are only as current as their last process run.
- Save the query and share it. A saved, shared “Open Pledges” query that development staff can run in one step is often enough. Name it plainly so nobody builds a second version.
- Use a constituent attribute, carefully. Some teams record the outstanding balance in an attribute so it appears on the record. It works, but it goes stale the moment a payment posts. Only do this if someone owns updating it on a schedule, and label it with an “as of” date.
Option 3: A recurring pledge report for finance and leadership
Outstanding pledges usually matter most at month end and before board meetings. Rather than rebuilding the export each time:
- Keep one saved query as the source of truth and reuse it.
- Agree with finance on the definition (does it include write-offs, matching gifts, pledges recorded but not yet signed?) so the development number matches the books.
- Reconcile once against your general ledger receivable for pledges. If the numbers differ, find out why once, write it down, and stop re-arguing it every month.
If you want it outside Altru
Many teams want this figure in a shared spreadsheet or dashboard that leadership already opens, without someone exporting and pasting every week. Our Data Bridge syncs Altru query results to Google Sheets and other tools, so the open-pledges query above can feed a sheet that stays current. Altru remains where pledges and payments are recorded; the sheet is just a view of that query.
Quick answers
Is there a built-in total of outstanding pledges per constituent?
Check your smart field types and constituent record in a sandbox. If nothing fits, a revenue query filtered to pledges with a balance above zero, grouped by constituent, gives you the same figure.
Why doesn’t my development total match finance?
Usually definitions: write-offs, timing of payments posted after a batch closes, or pledges finance books differently. Agree on the rules and reconcile once.
