Social Good Software
How to Import Addressees and Salutations into Altru Without Surprises
“Dr. and Mrs. Alvarez” on the envelope, “Dear Maria and Tom” inside the letter. Every development office has those preferences somewhere: an old donor database, a gala spreadsheet, a board member’s handwritten notes. Getting them into Altru in bulk, rather than retyping them one constituent at a time, takes more planning than most imports, because
How to Filter an Event Attendance Report in Altru (and When to Use a Query)
You ran the attendance report for last Saturday’s lecture series, and what you actually wanted was only the members, or only the people from a donor list, or only the attendees who also registered for the fall gala. The report gives you everyone. Here’s what you can and can’t narrow down inside the standard report,
Fundraising Events vs. Program Events in Altru: Which to Use
The gala and the Saturday bird walk both have a date, a time, a price, and a guest list. In Altru, though, they can live in two very different places: the events area built for fundraising, and program events that hang off your ticketed programs. Pick the wrong one and you find out months later,
Hiding the Major Giving Prospect Constituency From Some Altru Users
A volunteer coordinator pulls up a longtime member to update their phone number and sees “Major Giving Prospect” listed among their constituencies. Nothing is technically wrong with that. But it’s the kind of label that can travel, gets mentioned at the admissions desk, or lands in a screenshot, and it can make a donor feel
How to Edit Recognition Credits in Altru, Including Memberships and Sales Orders
A couple buys a family membership at the front desk. The husband’s card pays for it, but the wife is the one who has been giving to your annual fund for ten years, and she is the one your development director wants on the donor wall. Six months later someone pulls a giving report, and
How to Flag Constituents With Unpaid Pledges in Altru
A board member pledged $5,000 at the spring gala and has paid $1,000 so far. Six months later the same person calls to buy event tickets, and whoever answers has no idea there’s a balance. Nobody wants to chase a donor at the ticket counter, but your development team would very much like to know
How to Inactivate Merchandise Items and SKUs in Bulk in Altru
Every gift shop builds up dead stock in Altru: last season’s exhibit tie-ins, a T-shirt run that sold out in two sizes, a vendor you stopped ordering from three years ago. None of it should be on the register, but it should stay in your history so last year’s sales reports still add up. Inactivating
How to Query Refund Information for Altru Ticket Sales
Someone in finance asks a fair question: “Of the tickets we sold for last month’s evening event, which ones were refunded, and who held them?” You open Altru’s query tool, start from sales orders, drill into the ticket and registrant details, and find plenty about who bought what. Refund details, though, are hard to find
How to Refund Sales Tax in Altru (Without Returning the Item)
A school district’s business office calls three weeks after a field trip. They’re tax exempt, they sent the certificate, and they were still charged sales tax on the gift shop bundle that came with the group visit. They don’t want the merchandise back. They want the tax back, and only the tax. That is one
How to Change Appeal Mailing Merge Fields in Altru
You build an appeal mailing in Altru, run the export, open the file in Word to start the merge, and the column you actually need isn’t there. Maybe it’s the last gift amount, a membership level, a spouse name, or a custom ask. The columns you do get are the ones that came with the
