A guest buys two tickets at the counter, asks for them by email, and nothing shows up. Or a donor calls asking where their receipt is. When Altru won’t email a receipt or ticket, staff usually blame the whole system. In practice the cause almost always falls into one of three buckets: the email was never generated, it was generated but couldn’t be sent, or it was sent and never reached the inbox. Finding the right bucket first saves a lot of guessing.
Start with one question: did Altru try to send it?
Before changing any settings, pick one failed transaction and find out whether Altru has any record of an outgoing email for it. If there’s no trace at all, the problem is upstream: the transaction, the constituent, or the setup. If there is a record and it shows an error or a bounce, the problem is the address or delivery. If it shows as sent and the guest still says they never got it, look at spam filtering and your sending domain.
Where that record lives depends on how your organization has email configured, and it’s not always obvious. If you can’t find it, Blackbaud support can tell you where sent and failed messages are logged for your database. That one answer makes every future troubleshooting call shorter.
Bucket 1: the email was never created
These are the most common causes, and none of them are errors in the usual sense. Altru simply had nothing to send, or wasn’t told to send it.
- No usable email on the constituent. A walk-up sale processed without a constituent, or under a generic placeholder record, has nowhere to send. Check that the sale is attached to the guest’s actual constituent record and that the record has an email address.
- The email address exists but isn’t the one Altru uses. If a constituent has several addresses, confirm which one is primary. An old address marked primary will quietly win over the new one the guest just gave you.
- The address or constituent is flagged. Invalid-address flags, do-not-email preferences, or communication solicit codes can suppress messages. These are often set during imports or cleanups and forgotten.
- Delivery was set to print. Depending on how your sales process is set up, staff may choose between printing and emailing tickets or receipts. If they habitually pick print, or the default points that way, no email follows. Watch a staff member ring up a sale to see what actually happens.
- No email template is configured for that transaction type. An organization may have a working email for web orders and nothing set up for daily sales, memberships, or donations entered by staff. Check that each type of transaction you expect to email actually has a template tied to it.
Bucket 2: Altru tried and it failed
- Typos. “gmial.com” and missing letters are behind plenty of failures. Have staff read the address back to the guest at the desk.
- Bounced addresses. Full mailboxes, closed accounts, and work addresses that reject outside mail all bounce. A bounce may also mark the address invalid, which then blocks the next attempt too.
- Sending configuration problems. If every email is failing, not just one guest’s, treat it as a setup or service issue rather than a data issue. Check whether anything recently changed with your sending address or email settings, then open a case with Blackbaud support. Don’t spend an afternoon editing constituent records when the outage is global.
Bucket 3: sent, but never seen
This is the hardest one to prove, because Altru did its job. The usual culprits:
- Spam and promotions folders. Ticket emails with barcodes and links are prime candidates for filtering. Ask the guest to search their inbox for your organization’s name before resending.
- Your sending domain isn’t authenticated. If emails go out “from” your organization’s domain, that domain needs the right SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to permit the sender. Your IT contact or domain host can check this; ask Blackbaud what records your setup requires. Missing authentication is a common reason mail lands in spam or is rejected outright by larger providers.
- Corporate and school filters. Group leaders using work or district email often never receive automated messages. Ask for a personal address when it matters.
A short test that narrows it down fast
- Create a test constituent with a staff member’s personal email address.
- Run a small transaction of the type that’s failing (a single ticket, a $1 donation in a test batch, whatever matches), choosing email delivery.
- Repeat with a second address on a different provider (for example, one Gmail and one Outlook).
If neither arrives, the issue is configuration or the template. If one arrives and the other doesn’t, it’s deliverability. If both arrive, the problem is in the guest’s record or the way staff are entering the sale. Ideally do this in a sandbox or test environment if you have one, and void or clean up the test transactions afterward so they don’t skew reports.
Keeping it from coming back
- Make email the default delivery wherever your workflow allows it, and make print the exception.
- Train one habit at the desk: attach the sale to the right constituent, confirm the address out loud, and check that it’s primary.
- Run a weekly query of recent transactions whose constituent has no email or an invalid one. It shows you which registers, staff, or sales channels produce the gaps.
- Write down the resend steps so anyone can reissue a ticket or receipt without escalating, and so they know when to stop and call support.
Quick answers
Can staff just resend the ticket?
Usually, once the underlying cause is fixed. Resending to the same flagged or misspelled address will fail the same way, so correct the record first.
Why do web orders get emails but desk sales don’t?
Online and staff-entered transactions often use separate email setups. A working web confirmation doesn’t mean a template exists for daily sales or other transaction types.
