Blackbaud Altru
How to Build Constituent-Only Queries in Altru (One Row per Person)
You ask Altru for “everyone who visited last spring” and get back a list with households, a local foundation, two school groups, and the same member showing up four times. What you wanted was simpler: one row per actual person. Getting that takes a few deliberate choices when you build the query. Each one is
Altru Membership Promotions: What They Do and Where They Fall Short
Marketing wants a spring offer: 20% off Family memberships, new members only, online only, through May. It’s a reasonable ask. Whether Altru’s membership promotions can do all of it, some of it, or none of it depends on how specific the offer is, and it’s much better to find that out in planning than after
How to Track Percent of Capacity for Timed Tickets in Altru
Timed entry changes what “a good day” means. Total attendance doesn’t tell you much anymore. What matters is whether the 10:00 slot sold out while the 2:30 slot sat at a third full, and whether that pattern holds every Saturday. Percent of capacity is the number that answers that, and Altru holds both halves of
Why Altru Membership Card Dates Don’t Match Membership Expiration
A member hands over a card at admissions that says it expired last month. Staff look the person up in Altru and the membership is active through next spring. Which one is right? Almost always the membership. The card is a separate record that carries its own date, and that date doesn’t automatically move when
How to Set Up Giving Circles and Contribution-Based Membership in Altru
A donor gives $2,500 in two gifts over the spring. By your board’s definition, that puts her in the Director’s Circle: invitations to the preview reception, her name on the donor wall, maybe free parking. The question is how Altru knows that. Altru’s membership model is built around dues. Someone buys a level at a
Removing or Adding a Resource After a Group Checks In to Altru
The school bus pulls in, the group is checked in, and then the teacher mentions that they’re skipping the planetarium show and no longer need the second classroom. Now the reservation in Altru says one thing and the day is going another. The planetarium seats are still held, the classroom still shows as booked, and
How to Structure Membership Levels in Altru (Before You Build Them)
Membership levels are easy to add in Altru and surprisingly hard to take away. Every level you create shows up in the sales screens, on your web forms, in renewal notices, in queries, and in every report your board asks for. So the real work isn’t the setup. It’s deciding what the structure should be
How to Get a Date Range Out of the Altru Inventory Report
Month-end close comes around and finance asks a simple question about the gift shop: what was on the shelf on the first of the month, what sold, and what’s left? You open the Altru inventory report, look for a start date and an end date, and find that the report mostly tells you what’s on
How to Offer Monthly Membership Payments and Installments in Altru
A $240 family membership is an easy yes for some households and a hard stop for others. Splitting it into twelve $20 payments, or three $80 payments, can turn a “maybe next year” into a member today. The catch is that Altru is built around a membership being sold and paid for in one transaction,
How to Customize Altru Canned Reports (and Get More Detail)
The board wants last month’s membership numbers broken out by level and by ZIP code. Altru’s standard membership report gets you halfway, the layout is locked, and the column you need isn’t on it. Every Altru administrator hits this at some point. The short version: the canned reports in Altru are built to be run,
