Pull a list of constituents in any Altru database that has been running for a few years and the addresses tell the story. “123 Main Street,” “123 Main St.,” and “123 main st” all belong to the same household. Apartment numbers sit in the city field. ZIP codes have lost their leading zero after a round trip through a spreadsheet. Nobody did anything wrong. Addresses came in through the front desk, online forms, imports, and group sales, and each source had its own habits.
Messy addresses cost real money: returned membership renewal mailings, appeals sent twice to the same house, and duplicate records that split a family’s giving history in two. Most of the cleanup is a process problem, and you can make steady progress on it with what Altru already gives you.
Standardizing vs. verifying: two different jobs
It helps to separate these, because the tools and the effort are different.
- Standardizing means making addresses look consistent: the same abbreviations, the same capitalization, unit numbers in the right field, five-digit ZIPs. This is formatting. You can define it yourself and enforce it.
- Verifying means confirming the address actually exists and mail can be delivered there, and ideally catching people who have moved. That requires checking against postal data, which you cannot do by eye.
Standardizing is something your team can own. Verifying almost always involves an outside service.
What to find out about your own Altru setup
Altru address verification depends on what services your organization has with Blackbaud, and what is available, included, or extra-cost for a given Altru customer is not something to assume. Before you plan a cleanup project, ask Blackbaud support or your account contact three questions:
- Is any address validation or autocomplete available for our Altru database, and does it apply at data entry, in batch, or both?
- Is National Change of Address (NCOA) processing available through Blackbaud, and how are the results applied back to constituent records?
- If we run addresses through an outside vendor, what is the supported way to bring corrected addresses back in (import, batch, or another method)?
The answers decide whether you are fixing addresses inside Altru or exporting, correcting elsewhere, and importing back. Either path works. The second just needs more care.
Write a short address style guide
This is the step most organizations skip, and it is the one that keeps the problem from coming back. One page is enough. Decide on:
- Abbreviations. USPS style (St, Ave, Blvd, Apt, Ste) is the safest default because it is what postal software expects.
- Capitalization. Title case for entry. No all caps, no all lowercase.
- Unit numbers. On the same address line as the street, after it (“123 Main St Apt 4B”), or on a second line. Pick one.
- ZIP codes. Five digits at minimum. If you store ZIP+4, store it the same way every time.
- Required fields at the desk. If staff are allowed to skip an address on a membership sale, say so, so they do not invent placeholders like “unknown.”
Post it where people enter data and include it in seasonal staff training. If you control your online forms, make the field labels and any validation match the guide.
Finding the addresses that need work
Altru queries on constituent and address fields will surface most of the problems. A few worth building first:
- Constituents with a primary address but a blank or short ZIP (fewer than five characters).
- Addresses where the city or state field is blank.
- Address lines containing words your style guide does not allow, such as “Street” spelled out or “unknown.”
- Multiple constituents sharing the same address who are not in the same household. These are often duplicates or households that were never linked.
- Constituents whose mail has been returned, if your team records that somewhere consistent.
Start with active members and recent donors. A lapsed one-time ticket buyer from years ago is a lower priority than someone due for a renewal notice next month.
Fixing in batches, safely
For a handful of records, edit them by hand on the constituent record. For hundreds, export the query results, clean them in a spreadsheet or through a verification vendor, and bring them back through a supported import. A few habits keep this from going wrong:
- Keep the constituent lookup ID in every exported row so updates land on the right record.
- Format ZIP columns as text before you save the spreadsheet, or the leading zeros will disappear again.
- Test the import on a small set (ten or twenty records) and check them in Altru before running the full file.
- Decide whether a corrected address replaces the old one or the old one is kept as a former address. For people who moved, keeping the history is usually worth it.
Run the same verification pass on a schedule, at least once a year and before any large mailing. People move constantly, and a clean list does not stay clean on its own.
Addresses and duplicate records go together
Inconsistent addresses are one of the main reasons duplicates hide. Two records for the same member with “Main St” and “Main Street” will not look like a match to anyone scanning a list, so the giving history stays split and both records get the renewal letter. Standardize first, and duplicates become much easier to spot.
That is where Social Good’s Deduper fits: it finds and helps you fix duplicate constituent and email records in Altru. It is not an address verification service, but once your addresses follow one format, it is a practical next step for cleaning up the records those addresses belong to.
Quick answers
Does Altru correct addresses automatically as staff type?
Do not assume it does. Whether any validation or autocomplete is available depends on your Altru services, so confirm with Blackbaud support and test it in your own database before relying on it.
How often should we run a change-of-address check?
At least yearly, and before any large mailing such as a renewal series or year-end appeal.
