In the past, we’ve seen how to make the most out of the printable space on a ticket. Now, let’s take a look at customizing what prints on the receipts.

In Altru 4.3, we removed the Thank You! from the bottom of the receipt. You could add it back; better yet, you can add custom text to the bottom of the receipt and let your visitors know that they can trade in today’s tickets towards a membership. Let’s take a look at how that is done on the two most common printer manufactures, Epson and Star.

The first thing you have to do is to create the image. Because it is free and easy to use, we can use Paint. Go ahead and open Paint.

With Paint open on a blank document, let’s change the width of the document to better match the receipt size. To do this, click on the button just to the left of the Home tab. This will display a list of options. We want Properties:
Change the Units to inches and set the width to 3.
Next, you are going to add your message by choosing the text option from the Tools area and drawing the text box over the printable area.
Once you are done adding and styling the message, go ahead and save the file.
Let’s save it on your desktop so you can find it easily.

Now, all we have to do is tell the printer to use the image:

For Epson:

1. Find the image you created on the desktop, right click and choose Rename. Change it from a .png to .BMP. Hit OK at the warning.
2. Go to Printers and Devices.
3. Right click on your receipt printer and select Printing Preferences.
4. Click on the Document Settings tab.
5. Scroll down to the Logo printing section and then choose End of Document.
6. Change the Select Logo dropdown to Select Image file to use.
7. Click the Browse button, change the file type dropdown to look for BMP files and select the image we saved on your desktop.
8. Set the print position to Center, and adjust the size to 100% (you can change this later if it is too big.)
9. Hit Apply, OK and you are done.
   

For Star printers:

1. Find the image you created on the desktop, right click and choose Rename. Change it from a .png to .BMP. Hit OK at the warning.
2. Go to Printers and Devices.
3. Right click on your receipt printer and select Printer Properties.
4. Click on the TSP100 Configuration tab (it might also be: TSP600, TSP500, etc.) and Launch the utility. When prompted, choose Star line mode (default).
5. Click on the image list option on the left and Add your image.
6. Click on the Logos & Cropping printing settings on the left.
7. Click Add for Bottom Image List and choose the file you just uploaded. Go ahead and click Center.
8. Hit Apply Changes and you are done.
   

But what if you don’t have a Star or Epson printer? This is common functionality. Star and Epson may have particular steps for their printers, but I bet your printer supports customizing receipts as well. You might have to look around in Printing Preferences or Printer Properties to find it.

Let’s see how we did:
Not bad if I do say so myself. But this is just the beginning.

Don’t like the basic font style we chose in Paint? You can change it. Want to use a picture? You can. It’s up to you. You may have also noticed we only chose to include an image at the bottom of the receipts. You can also customize the tops as well using the same method.

Once you are happy with your image, you can easily add this to all the other receipt printers. Just put the final image some place you can easily access it from the other workstations and repeat steps 3 through 8/9.

My favorite thing about this solution is, it’s available right now and does not require any changes in Altru.

This is the last installment in a month long series of blog posts all related to Volunteer Management in Altru. Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 if you missed them.

A busy calendar of activities has a direct impact on your volunteer program: group tour reservations require docents, education programs need volunteer instructors,  fundraising events require the recruitment of volunteers to assist with the variety of tasks associated with hosting those events. One of the ways Altru adds value to your operations is that it extends the volunteer functionality into the operational areas of these activities – making it quite convenient to set up jobs and assign volunteers to the variety of these assignments. Let us have a closer look at each of the modules and see how volunteer module connects into them.

Group Sales Reservations

Volunteer assignments are set up as a staffing resource within the itinerary feature of the reservation. Please note that as you can set up multiple itinerary elements in a reservation, you can also assign different volunteers for each itinerary portion. For example, we may have a school group reservation that has a group tour, followed by lunch and then a workshop in a classroom. Altru has the flexibility of assigning volunteers for each of those items – which in turn means we can have volunteer job occurrences just for the portion of the reservation they are needed and not for the full duration of the reservation. So, in our example we can see a school group with three itinerary items, of which only the tour and class need volunteers:

A quick point before we discuss assigning volunteers in reservations: if you are going to assign a volunteer to a daily admission program, it is best to set up the occurrence in advance. For scheduled programs, Altru will automatically create a job occurrence when you attach a staffing resource to a volunteer job.

To set up volunteer resources, right-click on the appropriate itinerary item and select Edit to start setting up the volunteer assignment.
Within the Resources tab, select the staffing resource type that will be connected to the volunteer and the number of volunteers needed. Use the drop down in the Job being performed column to select the job occurrence prepared in advance. Altru will automatically populate the Job Name field. Click Save to save these changes.
If you navigate to the reservation page, you will see the volunteer assignment appear under Staffing with the default setting of “Unassigned.” Under Staffing resources, you can also see how the price assigned in Altru for this type of staffing resource is automatically assigned to the reservation.
We will repeat this for the scheduled program item. After using right-click to edit the scheduled program, we select the appropriate staffing resource type and the volunteer job to be performed.
If we go to the reservation page, we can see confirm the second staffing assignment:
Assigning a volunteer can be completed from the Unassigned section under Staffing.  Use the double arrow expand icon and click Assign to access the assignment window.
The assignment window displays the volunteers that match the assignment and the number of openings. You can select the volunteer and move them to the Assigned volunteers section.
The assigned volunteer is now displayed on the reservation page in the Assigned section. Remaining Unassigned volunteer staffing resource needs are displayed just above.
Please note that to show the flexibility of assigning volunteers, we did not set up a volunteer assignment for the “Lunch” portion of the reservation. However, Altru does allow you to set up job occurrences and assign volunteers to custom items in a manner similar to process followed with program event itinerary items.

Special Events

After you have set up the special event, you can start the process of assigning volunteers by clicking on the Job Occurrences tab.
When you add the job occurrence, we recommend including a reference to the event and the job in the name of the occurrence so it is easy to identify on the job page. While Altru by default populates the date and time information with that of the special event, you can adjust it so the occurrence is only for part of the event or even occurs on a separate date from the event (for example, stuffing invitation envelopes or decorating the location.)
To assign volunteers to this occurrence just click on the double arrow expand icon and click Schedule.
Use the Assign volunteers link just above the calendar grid to display the volunteers that match and then complete your selection.
The rest of the process is very similar to how you would assign volunteers to a job in the volunteer module. Altru displays the list of matching volunteers with their match percentage. You can review the match details of the volunteers and then select them the volunteer and click Assign to connect the volunteer to the event job occurrence.
Once a volunteer is assigned, you can use the View schedule link on the Job Occurrences tab of the event record to get a display of volunteers assigned to that job occurrence.

Program Events

When you assign a volunteer-based staffing resource to a program, Altru automatically creates a job that connects the name of the program with that of the staffing resource. For the program below you can see we have assigned the Instructor resource to be filled by a volunteer:
Altru automatically creates a volunteer job with a job occurrence that matches the date of the program event:
We have a couple of options when it comes to assigning volunteers in this case: you can assign a volunteer directly from the program event using the constituent search feature or assign the volunteer through the job record in the volunteer module. Please note that when the assignment is made directly from the program event record, the process searches for all constituents in the database and so will not be restricted to volunteers nor will it display any match comparisons.
If you choose to assign the job through the volunteer module, however, your search will be restricted to active volunteers and also leverage the match process.
The examples above show how Altru provides your team with the operational tools to help manage the volunteer logistics associated with your day-to-day operations in an efficient manner. I hope the information and tips in this blog post have provided options to shave time off your operational processes.

This is the first post in a three-part series about duplicate management.

Aaah! Duplicates! When it comes to duplicates and databases, I am reminded of the weeds in my garden. (It has been an unusually wet spring in my home base of Iowa.) However much I try, they seem to keep coming back!

Now in terms of “weeding” our Altru database, we have some great resources to help us manage duplicates. Some of my favs are the Masters Workshops on constituent record maintenance (notes and video) and duplicate management (notes and video). I should not forget to also mention Altru Champion Stephanie Henke’s excellent blog post on keeping data clean  – really useful!

I thought it would be helpful to approach duplicates from a different direction and tackle them at the source – even before they are created in the database. Constituent records are basically created through two processes based on who is doing the data entry: either by constituents themselves (online) or by staff/volunteers (sales/back office). Let us review the online process first.

Web forms are an invaluable channel in adding efficiency to your ticketing, membership, and fundraising operations because they connect directly with your Altru database and therefore eliminate the need for your staff to import data or assist in completing transactions. The challenge of this channel is it can result in duplicate constituent records being created because we do not have direct control on the data being entered by the Web form user. That being said, Altru does have built in mechanisms to reduce the number of duplicates: Altru will automatically connect the online transaction to an existing constituent if there is a more than a 93% match between the personal data in the form and an existing constituent record in Altru. However, it is inevitable that with variances in data entry that some existing constituents will slip through this match filter (how many times have you entered your information exactly the same way on a form?). One mechanism to eliminate these duplicates is to enable User Registration whereby Web form users can log in so Altru can pre-fill their personal information and connect the transaction to their original constituent record. We have a great Masters Workshop on this feature (notes and video). Let us review options on how we can be proactive in recruiting our most frequent users to sign up and log in.

Typically our most common online form users are members, as they are the most likely to use Web forms to renew their membership, but also to sign up for various activities and programs on offer. We can use the appeal process in Altru to send out an email blast to all of our active members that have an email address, but have not registered. This email (as in sample screenshot below) includes a convenient link for member to register online. By using this link within the email, Altru will directly connect the recipient’s constituent record to the online registration just entered.
If you are still in your implementation or customer success phase, please inquire with your consultant on how they can assist you with the set up. If you have already graduated from these phases, please use this how-to document to set up the process. Please contact Altru Support to review your configuration before sending out this first email. This way we can make sure all the selections and exceptions are set up correctly! We recommend sending this email on a monthly basis to make sure you are targeting all your members on a regular basis. As you fold this process into your communications schedule, you could also adjust your schedule to send out this email after a popular program so members have an incentive to register and therefore save themselves some time and pick up automatic discounts when they sign up for the next program.

One of the ways you can encourage members to register online is to set your ticketing membership discounts to automatic. This way members have to login to get the discounts through the online process. Be sure to include a brief, but noticeable, statement in the Web description of your programs eligible for member discounts explaining this functionality so members are not caught off guard. I recommend also slipping in a link to your membership Web form on these program forms; you should not be surprised if some non-members read about the automatic discount and decide to become members!

In your user registration sign up email, I would not be shy in explaining how registering online will benefit the member. By registering online, members will not only receive automatic discounts, but they will also have their information pre-filled into the Web form. You can also assure the member that they can reset their own password and will not have to contact you. It would not hurt to also slip in a mention that when members use online registration, it saves staff time and therefore gives them more time to focus on your institution’s mission. Remember, members are a core group of your supporters and most will not hesitate taking an extra step to support your cause.

Do not restrict your recruiting of online registration to just these emails. Include a reference to online registration in all your membership and program promotional materials. The convenience of an online channel and automatic discounts can be a great incentive for even non-members. So slip in a mention that non-members will receive the automatic discounts if they sign up for membership in the same transaction as they purchase tickets.

Let us switch to the other channel for data entry by staff or volunteers. This is much more manageable because we have greater control on the process. The first step is to make it easier for your team by including the tasks for adding constituent data into the script you have set up for team members to welcome visitors and process transactions at front line locations such as the admissions desk, gift shop, or even over the phone. For example the script to welcome visitors should include an inquiry if they are members or if they have visited before. This is especially important if the transaction is going to include collecting information such as program registration. Staff and volunteers also appreciate some built-in flexibility in the script so they can adjust this process if things get really busy. It is important that team members use the search function to see if the constituent already exist in the database. This way if the visitor has a record because they registered for a program or made a donation a couple of years ago, we can makes sure we are not creating unnecessary duplicates.

Team members should also become familiar with the mechanics of the search process in Altru. Remind those managing data entry that not all visitors introduce themselves or fill out every form the same way. For example a patron may mention their first name as “Ted” ─ but we may have him in the database as “Edward”. So while including first names in search fields is effective in reducing search results, it can also omit records.

Also be sure that your data entry protocol for front line staff includes some additional basic information such the patron phone number, email address, or full address.  The reason for this is that Altru will use that information to compare this record in real time against existing records and immediately alert the user with a duplicate resolution screen. In the screenshot below we can see how the same last name and phone number have triggered an alert for potential matches and therefore avoid entry of a duplicate:
If they get a large list of results they should refer to the additional fields provided in search results such as membership and address to identify if the record exists or there is an existing match. In any case, it would be a good idea that if time permits, the team member makes a note of this record and advises the development or membership teams to follow up and confirm the constituent record data is correct. I recommend leveraging the Altru help files on how to prevent duplicates  with best practices and workflow.

Hope these tips help you get an early start on preventing duplicates before they are created in your database and therefore saves you even more time on database maintenance. Now if I only had some similar tools to help with my garden…

Next time: Part 2: Identifying Duplicates in your Altru Database.

Ever wondered how stock gifts really work in Altru? It’s easier than you thought! Sit back and let Altru do all the work for you.

If you receive stock as a donation to your organization, you may need to record the information about the stock gift in Altru. It is important to keep a record of this if you are keeping the stock or if you are only selling a portion.

Note: If you are receiving a check from the brokerage firm, enter the gift with a payment method of Check.

To record a gift of stock in Altru follow the steps below:

1. Go to the constituent record.
2. Click Add Payment under Tasks.
3. Enter the applicable payment information.
4. For the payment method, select Stock.
5. Altru requires you to enter the Median Price per share and the Number of units. The median price multiplied by the number of units must equal the amount entered for the payment.
6. Enter Issuer, Stock Symbol, the Low Price per share, and the High Price per share, if desired.
7. Click Save.

Once you have stock gifts in Altru, it’s time to sell them! From the original payment record, you can sell the stock. Follow these steps:

1. Under Tasks, click Sell stock.
2. On the Sell stock screen enter the following details:
   1. Date of sale
   2. Sale amount
   3. Fees
   4. Units sold
   5. Median Price per share (Low and High Price per share are not required, but optional). The Median Price per share multiplied by the number of Units sold, must equal the Sale amount entered.
   6. Enter the GL post status and GL post date if your organization is using the Altru General Ledger.
3. Click Save. Altru will record the remaining units and loss or gain.

The payment will now have a Stock Sales tab that will allow you to access the sale information related to this payment.
A piece of good news is that you can unsell stock if you need to! On the payment record, you can remove the stock sale and return to the original payment by clicking Unsell stock under Tasks (only after the stock has been sold.)

Stock gifts record to the General Ledger differently than other payment methods. Be sure to check out this guide on which journal entries are created in the General Ledger when posting stock gifts. It is recommended that you contact your Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for specific recommendations on accounting for these transactions.

Now that you are an expert on selling stock, time to get started!

This is the second post in a three-part series about duplicate management.

Just like the weeds in Devendra’s garden, duplicates happen! Even if we have preventative measures in place, your Altru database is being touched by your whole organization and even your patrons online! Being armed with effective ways to manage those duplicates will help keep your database clean and your constituent garden weed-free!

There are two primary components to managing duplicates in your Altru database:

1. Identifying Duplicates (which we will discuss in this blog post)
2. Merging Duplicates (which we will talk about next week!)

Altru identifies duplicates through the Duplicate Search Processes. There are two duplicate search processes that you can take advantage of:

• Full Duplicate Search – this process scans your entire database for potential duplicates.
• Incremental Duplicate Search – this process scans all records that have been added or changed since the last search process. This option can save on processing time if you have lots of constituent records!

Within the Search Processes, you have three search settings to find help duplicates:

1. The Fast Process: This process searches on most criteria to return the highest probable matches in your database. This process also takes the least time if you’re looking for a quick scan of your database. Because the Fast Process is so specific, it will generate fewer results, so you may need to follow up with a Detailed Search to find more potential duplicates.
2. The Detailed Process: This process searches on the fewest criteria to return the most possible matches. This will take longer and you’ll have more to sort through, but it is a great deep scan of your database!
3. Custom Settings: With the Custom Settings option, you can choose what elements of the constituents you would like to match and pre-filter on. My favorite part of the Custom Settings is the option is to include a selection.

For example, if you have TONS of duplicates to sort through, you can use Custom Settings with a selection to filter on only organizations, or only constituents with a membership. This will help minimize your list of duplicates and help you get through your merge processes faster.

Once the search is complete, the Duplicate Constituent Report can help you review your potential matches.
I also recommend using this report to see if any relationships or households need to be created. For example, Cristina and Chris appear here in our results—they have similar names, but aren’t the same person. You can also click the hyperlinked name of the constituent to go to their record.

If this is your first time merging duplicate in your database, here’s what I recommend:

1. Run the Full Duplicate Search Process with the Fast Process and merge. This gets the highest probable matches merged and out of your way!
2. Run the Full Duplicate Search Process with the Detailed Process and merge. This will give you more to review, but this will help to really get your database squeaky clean!

Once you’ve done this initial merge, you can then put your Duplicate Search processes on a job schedule. This means they will run automatically and you won’t have to worry about manually running the process before you merge—a great timesaver!

Even after exploring these reports, you may need to set up some audit queries to help identify duplicates that won’t be picked up in the duplicate search process. For example, if a constituent is missing a key piece of information (such as an address or first name), they won’t likely have a 70% or above match percentage to a more complete record and therefore won’t show in our duplicate search process. We’ve actually pre-built a few queries in your Altru databases to help with this:

• Constituents with no primary address – helps to find constituents without an address. These may get missed in the duplicate search process.
• Individuals with No First Name – pulls all individual constituents that do not have a first name.
• Constituents added between date range – this query is designed to help audit data that is being entered. You can adjust the date range to monitor your data entry.
• Spouse Relationship Type but Is Spouse not set – this query is designed to help find constituents that may have a spouse relationship, but the “Is spouse” box wasn’t checked when adding the record.

For more information about running the Duplicate Search Process and identifying duplicates, see our Duplicate Management Curriculum here!

We’ve got big news this month!

www.blackbaud.com/altru-training

Check out our Altru Training web page. It’s your new one-stop-shop for information and links to all of our education resources.

Now on to our regularly scheduled program.

Altru Masters Workshop: Volunteer Management Part I – July 7th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

Volunteers are an integral component of your organizations day to day operations. This two-part Altru Masters Workshop will cover all aspects of how the Volunteer module in Altru can assist in managing your volunteer program. Part I will address how the configuration features in Altru help you organize volunteers and volunteer opportunities to match your organizational needs. Each instructor-led online session is one-hour in length and must be enrolled in separately. We recommend attending Part I as a prerequisite for Part II.

Altru Masters Workshop: Exporting Data – July 9th – 11am-12pm ET – Register here

This one-hour online instructor-led Masters Workshop will compare and contrast the ways to extract information from Altru.  Discussions will focus on exporting query results, using OData functionality, and creating and using export definitions.  We will also compare and contrast creating a mailing list using an appeal mailing vs. direct export tools.

Altru Masters Workshop: Volunteer Management Part II – July 14th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

Volunteers are an integral component of your organizations day to day operations. This two-part Altru Masters Workshop will cover all aspects of how the Volunteer module in Altru can assist in managing your volunteer program. Part II will focus on the day-to-day operational aspects of the Volunteer program: scheduling volunteers for job opportunities, entering hours worked, and reporting. Each instructor-led online session is one-hour in length and must be enrolled in separately. We recommend attending Part I as a prerequisite for Part II.

Altru Masters Workshop: Fundraising Reporting and Analysis – July 22nd – 1-2pm ET – Register here

This one-hour instructor-led online event will show you how to track your basic fundraising goals!  This includes setting goals on Designations, creating and using KPIs for Designations, using smart queries and other key reports.

Altru Masters Workshop: Getting Mobile with Altru – July 30th – 3-4pm ET – Register here

Want to get your Admissions lines moving faster? Have access to Altru at offsite events? Ever wanted to carry your query list of donors to visit on your phone for easy access? Then this one-hour instructor-led Masters Workshop session is for you. In this workshop, we’ll discuss how to use mobile query and pre-registered program and special event mobile check-in. We’ll also share some line-busting ideas and take a look at some mobile hardware that we’ve tested in the past. You won’t want to miss it!

Did you know?

While these are special Masters Workshop sessions are run live only once or twice a year, we record them whenever possible and post the recording and a copy of the class materials on our website. Check out the past Masters Workshops.

And as always, we have our regularly scheduled classes:

Appeals & Mailings 101 – July 14, 30
Batch 101 – July 29
Daily Financial Reconciliation – July 13, 29
General Sales 101 – July 7, 23
Introduction to Altru – July 7, 21
Managing Group Sales Reservations – July 9, 22
Membership Setup 101 – July 6, 21
Merchandise 101 – July 16
Query 101 – July 15, 27
Query 201 – July 17, 28
Revenue 101 – July 10, 20
Ticketing Setup 101 – July 8, 24
Web Forms 101 – July 13, 31

Happy Independence Day!

This is the third and final post in a three-part series about duplicate management.

If you look at the images above, you’ll notice they are actually the same person. Go ahead – look closely.

I’ll wait.

Every database has duplicates. It doesn’t matter what system it is or what company it comes from. It’s just one of those things that will always be an issue because human beings are somehow involved. If we accept that duplication happens, we’ll have a much easier time of dealing with it.

Identifying duplicates

Occasionally when searching for a single record, you’ll trip over something like this – either a definite or suspected pair of duplicates. In the absence of a concerted effort to locate and deal with duplicates this is the most common way of discovering them.

When duplicates are found in this manner, your organization will need a policy to know what to do next. Do you merge them since you found them? Notify someone else? Do nothing?

Merging Two Duplicates

Well great. We’ve got duplicates. Now what? There are two ways to merge duplicates in Altru:

• Merge individually identified pairs of records.
• Bulk merge records based on a system-wide search.

In this post we’ll tackle both. First, how do we deal with a single pair of duplicates we trip over when going through our day-to-day tasks?

Let’s have a look at the duplicate merge utility. Navigate to Constituents > Duplicates. There are two steps to merge a record:

1. Check your merge configuration settings. These are the rules Altru uses to decide what information to merge and what to discard. The default merge configuration is used by most organizations with very few, if any, changes.

Click Edit to review or change this configuration.

Each checkbox represents a different type of data that can be stored on a constituent record. If present, the checkbox, and any further settings inside the selected item define the rules Altru will follow when merging that particular slice of data.

The screenshot shows how addresses will be handled. By default the Target record’s address data will be kept as primary, and the Source data will be stored as additional addresses. In the case of an exact match on address, the Source address will be discarded. The rest of the settings follow a similar pattern. You can tweak these, or create a whole new set of values, saved under a different name.
Once you are satisfied that the settings accurately reflect how you want Altru to behave, click Save.

2. Merge two records. Click Merge two duplicates and fill in the form. Remember that Source is the yummy snack. Target is the record that is hungry and wants to eat a yummy snack.
Once you set your values and press Merge, you’ll be taken to the remaining record. Make sure to peruse the tabs, particularly contact info, to look for any remaining duplicated items like addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. Those will need to be manually cleaned up.

Duplicates are always part of a system like Altru, but a tool like this can help you quickly and easily get rid of them as they are discovered as part of normal day-to-day activities.

We’re infested – Mass-merging duplicates

Using the Full or Incremental Duplicate Search function, we can get Altru to do some serious self-reflection and determine on its own the state of its duplicate records. We discussed that in detail in the previous post.

Once the process has run, the next step is to use the results to merge many pairs of duplicates together at the same time. This is a much less time-consuming option that explicitly merging two records at a time.

From Duplicates, click Constituent Merge. We can create any number of processes here, each with its own rules, and levels of sensitivity in handling potential duplicates. In this example we will create and run a very restrictive 100% match process. It will only look at the most confident matches it found, and ignore all others for a later time. This is an incremental approach to mass-merging duplicates, and will help you build confidence in using the tool.

1. Click Add.
2. Name the process.
3. Select a Merge configuration – we’ll use the default configuration we looked at earlier.
4. Duplicate record source – this is how Altru knows what record pairs are to be matched. The sensitivity of the Full or Incremental Duplicate Search report the last time it was run determines that group of records.
5. Target constituent criteria – in each pair to merge there must be a Source and a Target. The rules here determine how Altru decides which of the pair is which. Generally speaking most orgs will want to keep the oldest record – the one that was created first, as the duplicate exists because a proper search was not performed.
6. Excluded constituents – we can build a query to explicitly exclude records we do not want to merge. Later on we’ll also see how to manually exclude records before we run the process.
7. Minimum match % – let’s set this way up at 100%. In subsequent runs of the process you can lower the value to include more records.
8. Only merge individuals – this will tell Altru to ignore any potential Organization record matches.
9. Omit individual/organization matches – this will tell Altru to ignore an Individual record that is interpreted as a duplicate with an Organization record.
10. Source constituent – we can either delete the source or mark it inactive. The purpose for merging duplicates is to clean up the database, removing the extra records we don’t need. Unless you have a really good reason to keep records as inactive, we recommend deleting them.
11. Click Save.

Now that our new process exists, let’s click on the name of the process to get more information before we run it.
Click on the Preview Merge tab.

We now have a very granular ability to review the potential matches that will be merged, and exclude any pairings from the merge process if we have any doubts about whether they are really matches. Click the Do not merge button to exclude a pair of records from the next run of the process. Click Delete merge to remove the match from the process entirely. Note that the pair will be re-added the next time you run the full duplicate search process.

Once we have reviewed our records, we can start the process!

Click Start process, review the settings, and click Start when ready.
Our process has completed!
Just one record (for each duplicate match) remains…
…how you get it out of your bed, is up to you.

Here within Team Altru, we’re extremely proud of our Community Champions Program. This program is designed to both encourage and reward participation within the community from Altru clients like yourselves.  As of this month, we have 21 active Champions.  Through their participation, our community—and our client base—is enriched.  Last month we added three new champions. Please join me in welcoming them to the ranks: Leanne Smith of The Strong National Museum of Play, Susan Augenbraun of New York Transit Museum, and Dianne Crosby of Red Butte Garden.

Here’s a bit more about each of them:

Leanne Smith

Q: What’s your favorite part of Altru?

A: Well, I love working on queries in analysis. I am a hardcore novice but being able to pull and verify data pleases my inner nerd. I took some query classes with Altru (btw those classes are great to have) and I practice learning the software’s fields by a trial and error basis. I do hope to take my training further and be able to build some more complex queries.

Q: How has Altru helped you or your organization?

A: By giving us a starting point with a really solid software foundation. Since I work in the group sales mod I do see how great this software can be with some upgrades down the road. I have been “vocal” about this in the community and so have some of my fellow members. However, I do feel that Altru is addressing functionality and is working side by side with community members to take us further. In my experience in Group Sales and being through three software systems, there is not a software system out there without some cons nor is there one that I have seen or worked with that hits a department wide set of so many pros like Altru has. One major pro was doing away with paid user specific licenses. This has allowed us to have “new” users in our organization. I found that to be a great thing for staff members to be able to rely less on request forms and separate spreadsheets and actually be able to use Altru for their own specific needs.

Susan Augenbraun

Q: What’s your favorite part of Altru?

A: I work primarily with the Group Sales calendar, so I think that has to get my vote. But I also rely on the Information Library and on queries for a lot—I love data! I suppose it’s really the two in combination: entering all the information I get into Group Sales allows me to later get all sorts of useful spreadsheets out of it.

Q: How has Altru helped you and your organization?

A: Based on what my colleagues and supervisors have told me, I know that the reporting tools in particular have been an improvement. We’re also able to collect a lot more data now than we could previously—so one of the things that we’re working on, in my department at least, is making better use of the data we already have.

Altru has also helped me make connections with colleagues in the field: when the staff at a nearby institution was thinking about making the switch, I showed one of them how we use Group Sales and how it works for our school group visits. Since I’m still in the beginning stages of my career, it’s important for me both to meet other people and to remind myself (and others!) that I do have a lot of knowledge worth sharing.

Dianne Crosby

Q: What’s your favorite part of Altru?

A: I manage the Front Desk and Gift Shop staff.  My favorite Altru feature is Daily Sales.  I love that my staff can sell an admission ticket, membership and/or merchandise all in one transaction.  Our gift shop is mere steps away from our admission desk.  Before we had two separate systems, requiring separate transactions at the separate desks.

Q: How has Altru helped you or your organization?

A: This has helped us because we no longer have to send a customer to another desk to pay for something else.  And when the line starts to get long at one location we can offer to help a customer from the other.  Being able to sell tickets and memberships in the gift shop or sell merchandise at the front desk has really helped us better serve our customers!

Every once in a while, we like to do a Community Roundup where we gather up all the great questions and suggestion posts from other users in one place where you can easily view them and add your comments and expertise, plus get some tips and tricks from other users!

This time, I’ve categorized them into sections so you can see what might be most relevant to your role.

Membership:

What do you use for membership cards—reusable cards?  Peel off cards?  No Cards?  What successes or challenges have you had with each method?

Do you have members that want to waive their benefits when purchasing a membership online?  How do you track that or note it?

Guest Services:

Does your organization participate in a reciprocal benefit program where members from other museums get benefits at your organization?  If so, chime into the thread about how you track these people.

Merchandise:

Do you give away your merchandise for auctions or for displays?  If so, how do you track that in Altru?

Have you done a merchandise inventory count in Altru?  Please share your tips and tricks!

Hardware:

Are you a hardware guru and like playing with new gadgets?  Give Mike your advice on mobile scanners.

Do you use Macs with Altru?  Thinking about getting a Mac?  If so, this post has some really well thought out points on how to accomplish this best, what some snags might be, and more.

Volunteers:

Does your organization use a lot of volunteers?  How do you go about connecting timesheets to jobs and other volunteer quandaries?

Development:

Do you use recurring gifts functionality in Altru?  It’s a great way to create a sustainable giving source.  Share your tips and tricks with Dan and others.

Database Administrators:

Does your organization have a database administrator or are you looking to add one?  If so, this post might help you develop a justification for why you need one and a task list/job description for what their duties would be.

If you have a question you’d like ask other Altru users, feel free to create a post in our Community.

Many of you know that I’ve filled two roles within the Altru Community. First, I was an Altru Community Champ while working at The Discovery Museums (Acton, MA). Now, I’m a Customer Success Consultant on the Altru team. Having straddled positions inside and outside the company, I’ve had the unique opportunity to see how Altru can be put to use by good configuration.

At The Discovery Museums, we didn’t have access to the Prospect module. Still relatively new in its existence, only a portion of our customer base actually use it at present. That doesn’t mean the organizations who go without out don’t have the need to track prospects. In fact, many aspects of this module take advantage of features that already exist within the product. Interactions, for example, exist for all customers regardless of whether they have access to the Prospect module.

At The Discovery Museums, we launched a Capitol Campaign and devised our own system for tracking prospects throughout their life cycle using Interactions, Attributes, and Query.

Attributes

Since we didn’t have the Prospect module, we couldn’t set up prospect plans in Altru the “traditional” way. Instead, we created a series of attributes. One code table identified the “stage” of the prospect: Identification, cultivation, etc. Another attribute was for expected ask date, another for actual ask date, another for ask amount. In this way, all prospects were tagged with the same type of information that Altru’s Prospect module now keeps track of.

Interactions

Just like pending and completed objectives within the Prospect module, we needed to keep track of important interactions – both upcoming and completed – with important donors. To manage this, our Development team used specific Interaction Types to keep track of meetings, calls, even grant submissions. In order to be able to effectively report on the status of these different types of interactions, we created a specific naming convention. Action Items were given a contact method of “Task/Other” (as opposed to phone call or email), and a general category of Campaign Action.

Grants, meanwhile, were all titled with “Grants:” to be easily reported upon, and they had a category type of “Grant Proposal.” The subcategory was then re-purposed as the ask amount. Thus, all pending and received grants could be tracked.

Reports

Like all organizations, being able to easily report on the status of prospects during a capitol campaign is of utmost importance. Having created our own system of tracking prospects and grants, we also set up our queries to create reports for weekly status meetings. The following are sample queries that can be used to report on the attributes and interactions we set up:

All Prospects tagged with Attributes

This report operates like the Prospect Plan Analysis report. It allowed us to track Prospects throughout their lifecycle (Pipeline Attribute), their ask amount, ask date, etc.
Grants

This report allowed our Grants Manager to report weekly on the status of all grants. Using Interactions prefixed with “Grant,” we could easily query based on interaction name, and report on time period, status, etc.
As you can see, we got a little creative at The Discovery Museums. Using existing Altru features, we came up with a system to track prospects during an important Capitol Campaign. Three staple features – Interactions, Attributes, and Query — enabled us track and report progress.

Whether or not your organization is using Altru’s Prospect module, I hope reviewing these configurations might benefit you. Either way, I do hope it encourages you to look at Altru as the vast and important database that it is — capable of keeping track of and reporting out any data that you desire.

If you have any questions about the Prospect module, or how we did things at The Discovery Museums, please reach out to me!

Check out our Masters Workshop on Moves Management too!

A guest post by Kevin Sanderson, Network Administrator, The Frist Center for the Visual Arts

Like most venues converting to the Altru platform, the Frist Center prides itself on having unique and personalized delivery methods for presenting ourselves to the visitors we treasure. One of those methods features custom Frist Center branded tickets, which include a one-inch square sticker in the middle of the ticket. The sticker, which customers peel off and place on their clothing, is used by Frist employees, gallery security, and volunteers to determine that visitors entering the galleries or a program have checked in at one of our admission entry points. The information on the sticker includes the date, the time, and whether the individual is a member. The member designation quickly indicates the visitor’s special status to all the staff, which expedites the application of benefits such as Gift Shop discounts, as well as providing the staff opportunities to thank these visitors for their support.

During the migration process from our old ticketing system, it became clear that our custom ticket stock initially wasn’t going to be usable with Altru’s default ticket template. This presented a big challenge for us because we really wanted to preserve our unique ticket branding and graphic identification, and we would not be satisfied using basic blank tickets. We were very pleased that almost immediately after we asked our Altru team about the issue, Altru announced that custom ticket templates were in the pipeline.

Altru announced they would be using files with .SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), so I started searching for applications that could work with these files, create them, etc. Having no graphic design skills, and having looked at Gimp (an image manipulation program) maybe four times in my life, I was relieved to discover Inkscape, an application that looked as if it could provide a fairly straightforward solution.

Before watching all the tutorials and YouTube videos on Inkscape, I wanted to see what the existing default Altru ticket template looked like. Viewing this template as an .svg file in Inkscape was by far the best way to start. After I pulled it up I was able to create a new .svg file that mimicked the outline parameters of the default template, and then copy/paste in the fields in an order I wanted. The sizes of the merge fields are very flexible, and there are many font options.

I did run into an issue when trying to add free text to the tickets, as it first showed up as black bars across the ticket. Fortunately Dan Peters of the Altru Community had some pointers. The complications were both a layering snag as well as Inkscape not recognizing my free text as actual text. Also, since we have a large variety of price types in our system, I had to pay extra attention to those fields, centering them for the longest price type so the rest would fall in line correctly. After solving these challenges through multiple cycles of trial and error and test printing, we now have the tickets working like a champ.

One of the great things about this system is you can make minor tweaks to the template, re-upload it, and then reprint an old ticket that will show your changes. This takes only 30 seconds to do, so if you’re a perfectionist you can have a field day getting everything to look exactly right. The flexibility has been great thus far, even though I’ve merely scratched the surface of what we can do.

Here are some ticket examples from our past system, and what we’ve been able to improve so far.

These are examples of the pre-Altru admission tickets. Notice the square sticker with the number, which represented the day of the month. Member tickets had the word “Member” on them.
And here is an example of our current Altru ticket. We’re currently having to squeeze the full dates into the square sticker, but we’re now also able to add some free text to the bottom of the ticket.
This is the pre-Altru drink ticket, which was generated at member previews and other special events where drinks were to be sold. This was printed on regular blank ticket stock.
And here is our current Altru drink ticket. I’m very satisfied with this design, although there are improvements I need to pursue, such as adding the merge field for transaction date.
Overall updating the Frist Center ticketing system has been a great learning experience for me, and the future looks bright, for both the Frist and Altru. I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to get more and more functionality out of Altru for our tickets and receipts, and I’m very pleased with how far we’ve come.

“My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!” –William Goldman, The Princess Bride

If you are asking yourself, what is The Princess Bride, then you MUST run to Film Streams to watch the next showing of this classic film from the 80’s. If you’re into Great White Sharks or Mysteries of the Unseen World, check out the show times at Discovery Place IMAX. Want to see a movie still in theatres? Check out Jurassic World at The World Golf Hall of Fame or Inside Out at Bob Bullock IMAX Theatre.

Altru customers like Discovery Place, Film Streams Theatre, World Golf Hall of Fame, and Bob Bullock offer a wide variety of genres to fit every audience drawing crowds from all over. While this is an additional revenue stream for some organizations, it does bring on an additional task of reporting. Most organizations that run IMAX or other films are required to report attendance & revenue on a weekly or monthly basis. This means that most of these organizations are gathering the same data month over month. Let’s share some of the information vendors require and how to obtain that information in Altru.

1. Daily Attendance for each IMAX/film – Most vendors require the daily attendance by price type. To get this information, start off with a sales order query. Using this screenshot, configure the query and adjust the fields as needed for your organization. For example, you may use program category but the category name might be different.
2. Daily Revenue for each IMAX/film – Along with the daily attendance, vendors need to see the accompanying daily revenue for each film.
   1. Daily Revenue – http://screencast.com/t/Li6hjryxYCS
   2. Revenue by Price Type – http://screencast.com/t/TqCn49PXbm
   3. Revenue by Payment Method – http://screencast.com/t/nm1JZjlaB
3. Comp Tickets Used – It’s important to report the number of comps or discounts given by film. This sales order query will pull # of tickets where a comp/discount was applied. http://screencast.com/t/VTc18kxJt
4. # showings per month – Not all vendors require this but you might to report on the # of showings per film each month. This sales order query will give you that information. http://screencast.com/t/cDjzo5gDgOcr

We also have some information documented in our Knowledgebase about how to report on these types of events and the associated revenue. For those organizations that might not need this level of detail but do want to report on the unearned revenue for an event, check out this article.

If you’re in the area or looking for your next road trip, catch a film or IMAX screening at one of the amazing organizations listed below:

Bob Bullock (Austin, TX)
Discovery Place (Charlotte, NC)
Film Streams (Omaha, NE)
World Golf Hall of Fame (St. Augustine, FL)

When you’re looking to pull information cleanly in Altru, nothing beats a good export! Not only do you get one row per record, but by using an export definition, you have much more control about what information you display. This blog post will discuss some helpful exporting tips to help you utilize export (and your data!) to its fullest. Whether you are an export pro, or only just starting to experiment with it, I know these tips will be helpful!

Before we get started—there are a few important things to know about exporting data with an Export Definition.

Export starts with a selection of people, sales orders, revenue, etc. that you’d like to pull information from. The export definition then determines what information you’d like from those records. The export process then pairs the two together and pulls the information specified in the export definitions from the records in your selection:

Here’s an image to illustrate:
One very important thing to note is that the Export Definition and the filters in your selection are completely unrelated!

For example, in query, if you were to add “Constituency is equal to Staff” in Include Records Where, then output the Constituency field in Results fields to display, you will only see Staff, even if that constituent has other constituencies on the record. In Export, your export process is only seeing you need information from that record—the export definition then determines what information you need.

Now that we’ve got the basics nailed down, let’s get to the good stuff! Here are some expert export tips that will help you to make pull the perfect list!

Tip #1: Export Criteria is your BFF

In the World of Altru, I really do consider Export Criteria to be my best friend. This gives us the option to see exactly what we want to see from the results—and that is a beautiful thing:
Let’s break it down using phone number as an example—this screen is basically asking us three questions:

1. How many would you like to export?
2. Which do you want to appear first?
3. What types would you like to see?

If we want to see 5 phones, we change the Number to export to be 5:
Let’s say, we want to see the most recently added. We will change the Order by field to sort by Date Added (Descending will give us newest to oldest):
And we only want to see Business, Home Phones, or Cell Phones. Instead of exporting all phones, we can choose to only output selected phones and use the fields from the left. In this instance, we’ll use “Phone Type” and output only those phone types we are looking for:

Tip #2: Use Multiple Nodes

Now don’t stop here—you can output multiple nodes with different export criteria to get separate columns for different types of data.

Using Phones as our example, let’s say we wanted Business Phone, Cell Phone, and Home Phone in separate columns. We can actually add multiple nodes with different criteria to accomplish this:
To add another node, all you have to do is click the top record in Selected Fields and re-add your field. A new Export Criteria window will pop up and you will be able to add new criteria. Here’s a short no sound video to illustrate.

This comes in extra handy with Sales Orders or Group Reservations. Often times, I want separate columns for different Price Types that may exist on Orders.

Tip 3: Recycle Export Definitions

Because Export Definitions exist separately from an export process, you can reuse Export Definitions with different selections and different export processes.
Does your Executive Director always ask for the same set of information about different groups of people? You can set up one export definition and use it in multiple export processes!

You can also use an existing Export Definition as a starting point for a new one. It’s just a quick Copy away!

Tip 4: Write a Letter

Although this tip isn’t really directly related to exporting a list, I couldn’t resist sharing! We’ve recently added a great new feature that enables you to “Write a Letter from a Template.” This allows you to merge a letter directly from the constituent record. The best part is that you can use a standard header file OR you can build your own export definition to include whatever merge fields you’d like!

You could use this for standard letters or documents you frequently send to your constituents. For example:

• Fundraising Solicitation Letters
• Fundraising Stewardship Letters
• Planned Giving Letters
• Birthday Letters
• Annual Statements
• Group Sales Invoices

…and more!

Here’s how:

1. Go to Administration > Export Definitions and build a Constituent Export Definition with information you need for your letter template. Be sure to mark the option when saving your export definition to allow other areas to use it!
2. Go to Marketing and Communications > Letter Template Library and generate a Header file to use to create your letter template:
3. Use a Mail Merge in Microsoft Word to insert the Altru merge fields into your letter template.
4. Upload the merged Word template to the Letter Template Library as a constituent letter.

For detailed steps, be sure to view our videos:

• Using Write a Letter Tools in Altru Constituent Records
• Creating Template Letters using a Header File in Altru

In case you missed it, you can also find the recording and notes from our Masters Workshop about Exporting Data on the new Altru Training page.

On our team internally, we do a series called Did You Know with each month covering a different topic. It’s Arts & Cultural based, so we talk about things like arts & cultural organizations offering free admission, the effect of training on user’s satisfaction, and the number of different arts & cultural organizations out there. It’s always interesting and usually a great conversation starter!

I hope to bring that kind of series to you today. As a Support team member, one thing I’ve been hearing a lot lately is the desire to partially refund a portion of a ticket or membership to a patron, but not being able to. I’m here to ask you today: Did you know you can partially refund portions of tickets, memberships, and preregistered program event tickets? If you didn’t know, now you do!

Now let me give you the details. In Altru version 3.14, released February 2014, we added the ability to partially refund items on an order such as tickets, memberships, and preregistered program events, even if they were discounted.

I’ve heard from you all that you need this ability, but let me give you some examples of when this really comes in handy. Let’s say you offer camps using preregistered programs, and if someone cancels after a certain date, you keep a portion of their money as a cancellation fee. You can partially refund their ticket price, resulting in you keeping a portion of what they paid as your cancellation fee. Another example is if you sold a membership to someone, but they were very disappointed in the experience they had. You could partially refund them a portion of their membership. The possibilities are really endless!

By now you’re probably asking HOW?

Below are the full written steps, but I really recommend watching our videos in our new Knowledgebase as I think these pictures are worth a thousand words.

1. Select Sales and then Refunds.
2. Search by the Order #, Constituent, Payment method, or Source.
3. Click the item you need to refund and click Select.
4. Under Items to be refunded, mark the checkboxes next to each item you would like to refund if more than one item is present.
   Note:  If you only need to refund some of the items in the order, only mark the checkboxes next to these items.
5. To partially refund an item, change the amount to refund in the Refund column. Hint: It looks like this field cannot be edited, but click in the field to place your cursor there and change the amount from the default amount to a lower amount for a partial refund.
6. In the Payment Details section choose the payment method you would like to use for this refund.
   Note: Credit Cards will not be refunded by the processor after 180 days have passed; you should refund these payments as Check or Cash.
7. Choose the Reason Code and add a comment if desired.
8. Click Refund.
9. A pop up box will ask you “With this refund, do you want to mark registrants as Canceled and add tickets back to inventory?.” If you click No, then the capacity for the event will stay the same and the registrant will not be marked as cancelled. If this person is no longer coming to the event, click Yes, marking this registrant and ticket as cancelled and increasing the event capacity which allows you to resell the ticket(s). If you are refunding memberships or membership add-ons, the pop-up will ask if you would like to cancel the membership.

Lastly, I want to give you a few tips and tricks before you get started. We cannot partially refund fundraising event registrations or memberships with contributed revenue. This is because we cannot discount those items, so we cannot partially refund them. In addition, once an item has been refunded (either partially or fully), you will not be able to refund it any more.

I hope I told you something new and interesting today that you didn’t know before!  Now get to refunding!

Last month we announced a new one-stop-shop for all the information that you need about Altru education and training. I hope everyone’s had a chance to check it out by now. We’re still really excited about it and think it’s definitely worth bookmarking in your web browser: www.blackbaud.com/altru-training.

Two of the resources that you’ll find on that page are links to task-based curricula and role-based training guides. Both of these resources help you to figure out exactly what training is right for you depending on the exact tasks you need to complete in Altru or your job role, respectively. We’ve just released three new curricula (which join the 11 that we had before.)

Managing Your Memberships
Configuring Fundraising Hierarchies
Configuring Marketing and Communications Defaults

We’re also in the process of updating all of the role-based training guides. So far we’ve updated the guides for Database Administrators, Development Directors, Development Data Entry staff, Special Event Managers, Guest Services Managers, Ticket Sellers, and Web Administrators.  We also released two guides that we’ve never had before for Gift Shop Managers and Volunteer Managers. Hopefully these answer the question “I’m a new _______________ and I need to know what I should learn about Altru.”

I’d welcome feedback, if you have any. We’re always looking for ways to improve what we have or fill gaps when there is something missing. There is a Community Post all setup and ready for your comments.

Our education update wouldn’t be complete without letting you know what’s coming in August for our Masters Workshop and regularly scheduled classes. We’ve got two new topics in the Masters Workshop this month and are rerunning some popular workshops that we’ve held before.

Altru Masters Workshop: Configuring Group Sales Part I – August 3rd – 4-5pm ET – Register here
Altru Masters Workshop: Configuring Group Sales Part II – August 10th – 4-5pm ET – Register here

This two-part Altru Masters Workshop will cover everything you need to know about the configurations areas for Group Sales and Facility Rentals in Altru. During Part I, we’ll review key elements from the Group Sales checklist including Price Types, Group Types, Resources, Locations and Reservation Defaults to see how they can be adjusted to match your group sales operations. In Part II, we’ll cover elements such as contract template, discounts, flat rate-pricing, and itineraries and tracks.

Introduction to Altru and Ticketing Setup 101 should be considered prerequisites for both sessions of this workshop. Each session will last 1-hour and you must enroll in Part I and Part II separately.

Note: This Masters Workshop does not cover data entry or management of Group Sales Reservations. Those topics are covered in the Group Sales Reservations in Altru class offered on an ongoing basis.

Altru Masters Workshop: Merchandise Inventory Management – August 7th – 2-3pm ET – Register here

Learn how to manage your inventory in Altru. Keep accurate records by using the Physical Count Worksheet, Physical Count Batch, and Receiving Batch. Learn how to update individual merchandise items that need to be adjusted on the fly. In this one-hour instructor-led Masters Workshop session, we’ll discuss the tools you need to be more efficient when working with merchandise in Altru.

Altru Masters Workshop: Web Forms In Depth – August 14th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

Web forms are a confluence of convenience. Convenient for your audience (sign up at any time/any place) and convenient for your staff (no follow up needed). So, it’s no surprise that we are seeing more and more transactions come through online. Join us for a one-hour instructor-led Master’s Workshop to dive “under the hood” of Web Forms functionality in Altru. During this session we’ll review what options your team has to customize the design of Web forms in Altru. We will also look at the functionality of each of the fundraising, programs, registration, and membership Web forms. This Master’s Workshop goes beyond the basics, so students are recommended to attend Web Forms 101 in Altru prior to attending this session.

Altru Masters Workshop: Bring Your Own Query – August 18th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

Stumped while trying to create a specific query? Looking for some expert advice? This is the Masters Workshop for you. In this one-hour instructor-led session, we’ll discuss how to dissect a query request down into its important components, including identifying information missing from the request. We’ll also tackle some of your query stumpers. All students enrolled one week ahead of the class date will receive an email with instructions on how to submit their specific query need to the session instructor. We’ll work through as many of your queries as we can in time allotted, giving tips along the way. Query requests must be received at least three (3) days prior to class for possible inclusion. This is an advanced class, students should have completed Query 101 and Query 201 for Altru prior to attending.

Altru Masters Workshop: Fundraising & Special Events Part I – August 19th – 1-2pm ET – Register here
Altru Masters Workshop: Fundraising & Special Events Part II – August 26th – 1-2pm ET – Register here

This two-part Altru Masters Workshop will cover everything you need to know about Fundraising and Special Events.  Part I covers setting up your events including creating registrations options, assigning event coordinators, tasks, and expenses, and configuring a seating plan. Part II will build on information covered in Part I, so it is suggested that Part I is taken as a pre-requisite to Part II. Part II will focus on what to do after initial event setup, such as creating invitations and managing invitees and registrations. It will also cover reporting on your events. Each session will lasts 1-hour and you must enroll in Part I and Part II separately.

Did you know?

While these are special Masters Workshop sessions are run live only once or twice a year, we record them whenever possible and post the recording and a copy of the class materials on our website. Check out the past Masters Workshops.

And as always, we have our regularly scheduled classes:

Appeals & Mailings 101 – August 10, 28
Batch 101 – August 27
Daily Financial Reconciliation – August 11, 27
General Sales 101 – August 3, 21
Introduction to Altru – August 6, 17
Managing Group Sales Reservations – August 4, 17
Membership Setup 101 – August 5, 20
Merchandise 101 – August 12
Query 101 – August 13, 25
Query 201 – August 10, 26
Revenue 101 – August 5, 19
Ticketing Setup 101 – August 3, 18
Web Forms 101 – August 12, 25

Altru 4.4 moves patrons through the line faster.

In early August, you’ll find new features included in your Altru subscription! The following updates help reduce wait times and improve the customer experience.

• Email Itemized Receipts
  Ticket sellers can now choose to print, email, or provide no receipt. And, as you collect or confirm email addresses for receipts, you gain valuable contact information for marketing.
• Membership Cards
  Add a personal touch to membership letters with the gift giver’s name and their message. We’ve also included the giver’s address and delivery preference, so you can segment and mail letters based on their destination. Lastly, a new merge field for primary members helps further refine your membership letters and cards.
• Recurring Gift Improvements
  • Specify how the program handles payments when more than one past installment has a balance or when constituents overpay or underpay
  • Add and edit a recurring gift payment
  • Track payment handling adjustment details on the recurring gift activity timeline
  • Update installment amounts to match payments

Visit the Altru New Features page to get all the information and guidance you need to begin using the new features right away.

We are thrilled to release this new functionality to you and always welcome your feedback.

Updates will be completed the week of August 3rd. You should have received notification of your upgrade window via email. You will be notified should the dates and times change.

More and more visitors to your organization are likely asking for an emailed receipt or to not have their receipt printed at all (like me.) Not all people want a printed receipted for their admission or other purchases. It seems to be more and more common. I recently had lunch at a food truck rodeo, paid on a tablet, and I personally declined a receipt, but was offered to have it emailed to me.

The good news is with the Altru 4.4 release, you’ll now get to decide how to handle receipts in Daily Sales. You can select what your default receipt action will be (email, print, or no receipt) and you can change that action on each sale depending on the visitor’s preference. For example, maybe by default you have elected to print receipts, so each time a sale is completed a receipt will print. However, if a visitor wants their receipt emailed, you can override the default by clicking a button and the receipt will be emailed instead. Conversely, if a visitor doesn’t want a receipt, click another button and no receipt prints.

This is a feature that you’ll need to opt into. Once your database is updated to the 4.4 release, receipts will continue to be printed by default. This happens because if you want to issue email receipts, you need to configure what you want them to say. If you’d like to start using email receipts and take advantage of this enhancement, there are a few quick steps to take.

First, you’ll need to select what your default option will be (print, email, or no receipt.) This is done by going into Sales methods from the Tickets page and clicking on the Daily Sales option.  Once on the Daily Sales page, on the Delivery Methods tab, click the double arrows next to the In person delivery method (which is generally the default delivery method for Daily Sales) and then click the Edit receipt default button. Select your default receipt action.
Next, go to the new Itemized Receipt Options tab and activate all the receipt actions that you’d like to offer to patrons and configure how you’d like your email receipts to appear. Click the double arrow next to Email receipt and click Email template. Here, type what you would like to appear before and after the purchase details on the email receipt.
Now that you have everything configured, let’s see what it looks like in Daily Sales when selling tickets. When you’re ready to complete the order you’ll now see these fields:
In our example, I’ve kept the default as Print receipt, so if the visitor wants a printed receipt, I don’t have to do anything; when I click Complete a receipt will print. If the visitor would like to have an email receipt, I can enter their email address and then click the Print receipt button. Note: If the patron has a constituent record in Altru and they have an email address on their record, the primary email will automatically appear in the box. Finally, if the person does not want any receipt, click No receipt before completing the order.

We have a great resource to provide more information as well as steps to guide you through setting up and using the new receipt enhancements. This link also includes specific videos that guide you through the setup and usage. https://www.blackbaud.com/howto/altru-newfeatures.aspx

I hope that you find this feature useful!

In my previous blog post New in Altru 4.3: Gift of Membership Field Enhancements, I gave a detailed instructions on how to export the gift message for gifts of membership within Altru. In our latest release Altru 4.4 we have now included those merge fields in the membership card output header file!

Now you can personalize the membership card and/or membership card letter with the inclusion of the gift giver’s fields including their gift message, address, addressee, and salutation.  A complete list of the new fields are below.

This means that you no longer have to create a separate export process and merge your membership cards/letters outside of Altru to take advantage of the new fields. Now it can all be done within the membership card process itself. For more on creating and editing the membership card templates, please check out our videos:
How to Configure the Print Membership Card Process
Creating Template Letters Using a Header File in Altru

Sometimes one of the hardest parts in planning an event is figuring out that seating. Not only do you want to make sure everyone has a fantastic time, but you often have to keep track of many special requests. That’s a lot to handle!

I’m in the process of planning a wedding now (exciting!), but the seating is one part that that I’m struggling with—keeping track of all that seating! While I love a good post-it, there’s got to be a better way than this:
Good news—with Altru, there is! The event seating functionality can allow you to:

• Add special seating notes to assist you with the seating process
• Pick a seating layout
• Group registrants that need to be seated together
• Assign your guests to the right seat

Never used Altru’s event seating functionality before? Don’t worry—here’s a short tour!

First things first, we need to Configure a Seating Layout.
When you configure a layout in Altru, you have the opportunity to select how people will be seated. Will they be in Sections and Tables? Sections and Rows? Or just Sections and Seats?
You will then specify how many sections there are, how many tables/rows, and how many seats. (Note: It’s totally ok to just have one section if you don’t need sections at your event.) This then gives us a total seating capacity and we can adjust as we move along:
From here, I like to name my tables and seats. This helps me with seating and reserving tables for specific sponsors:
If necessary, you can also adjust the number of seats. For example, if one table needs to have 11 seats instead of 10, you can edit that here.

After the seating layout is saved, it’s time to get people seated! You’ll now notice the Assign Seats option in your event:
This is where the real magic happens. There are a few pro tips to making the most out of seating your guests:

Tip 1: Seating Notes

When you edit a registrant on the Registrants tab, you may notice there’s a place for a seating note:
This field actually translates to the Seating section in Altru, so you can easily see if there are any special requests you need to accommodate or any important notes:

Tip 2: Use Groups:

You can use Groups in Assign Seats to group constituents that want to sit together. This can be a host and all of their guests or two donors that want to sit together, but registered separately. Groups can help you make sure your donors are sitting with the right people.

The best part? You also seat the entire group at once. With the group highlighted, click Assign to table:

Tip 3: Seat Multiple Guests at One Time

What if you don’t have constituents in a group—but you want to seat multiple guests at one table? You could click each guest into a seat, or you can use this short cut! Take advantage of your keyboard to highlight multiple guests. You can then drag these over to the seating section—all at once!

• Hold Shift and click the first record and the last record and your computer will select all in between. Here’s a short no sound video.
• Hold Ctrl and click single registrants to select all of those you clicked. Here’s a short no sound video.

Tip 4: Use the Filters

If you’ve got a few hundred registrants, it may be difficult to look at all of their names in the Registrants box. You can use the Show menu to narrow your list:
You can show Unseated Registrants only or Ungrouped and Unseated Registrants to help you figure out who still needs to be sat.

Tip 5: Escort your guests to their table

So now you’ve got everyone seated, but we still need to show our donors  to their tables when they arrive!

Altru’s canned report for this is the Event Seating Summary Report. It looks like this:
I also prefer to sort this report by Host, but you can do whatever is easiest for you!

If this report isn’t for you, you could also add seating information to a Registrant query that you may already have for event check-in. All of these fields exist in the middle column of a registrants query. I recommend using Table/Row Number and Table/Row Name. You can also use Seat Number or Seating notes if you’d like to see that. Here’s an example of a quick query with this information:

I hope these tips have been helpful! I know you are ready to nail your event—just like my favorite event planner, Franc, from Father of the Bride—except you won’t be going over budget of course!

Happy seating!

We all know that keeping a patron is easier and more profitable than trying to obtain a new patron; however, in most of the art organizations that I work with there is not a definite process in place to grow their patron data. Visitors to the museum for daily admission are very rarely asked for additional information outside of their zip code, so there is no way to track patrons to see if they are new or repeat visitors. Without this information it becomes difficult to track trends and what patrons are interested in outside of looking at sales numbers for particular programs and events. Establishing a process to obtain patron data opens up a whole new avenue to track sales order history, track interest, and market to these patrons to turn them into a repeat patron.

One of the questions that I get asked a lot during implementations is “How do we collect patron data during the sales process?”. I always answer this question with the same response, “You will create a patron record and collect name, address, phone number and email.” This response is normally met with “There is no way we can do that!” To be perfectly honest, collecting that data on every sale on busy days will slow the lines and lead to patrons becoming upset and having poor visitor experiences. Which leads to the question of how can I have my cake and eat it too. There are many ways that we can grow our patron database without having a negative impact on lines. Below, I have outlined a few of these processes.

Increasing Online Sales

One of the best ways to collect patron data (plus keep lines smaller) is encouraging your patrons to register for programs online. Online sales through Altru are automatically connected to a patron record so you are guaranteed to gather the information that allows you to market to this customer in the future. There are many ways to increase online sales to collect this data, and I have outlined three options below:

• Early On-Sale: Altru allows you to create on-sale dates for sales methods. If you allow web forms to go live before all other sales methods this encourages patrons to go online for their purchase.
• Avoiding the Lines: One of the benefits of selling program tickets online is the ability for patrons to use the eTicket option. With this functionally the patron can skip the ticket sales  lines and go right into the facility. Now this might require a change in how patrons are allowed into the facility but for the information that you are gathering it’s worth the change. Scanning tickets for programs also allows you to collect the number of tickets sold vs. the actual attendance.
• Online Discounts: Not all program sales will benefit from an early on-sale so another option is to have promo codes that only work online that will provide a discount to patrons that register on the web.

Increasing your online sales should be the goal of every organization, as there are cost savings with this type of transaction and improvements in the ease of use for the patron. Implementing some of the above options will not only help decrease the cost of selling a ticket, but it will increase the number of patrons in your database to help increase attendance in the future.

Increasing Patron data collection internally

The ability to collect patron data at the visitor services desk is not always practical on busy days of the week. However, we should not just dismiss the idea that we should be asking for the information from the patron when they attend your facility. The goal of every organization should be to continue to grow their patron database, as these can be future members and donors. So we need to become creative and make it a goal for everyone at your organization to help build that patron database. Below I have outlined a couple processes I have recommended to clients to help grow their patron database:

• Collect data during slower times: On the busy days of the week we know we cannot slow down lines and create a patron record. However, we also know that we are not always busy, and during those less busy times users should be asking if patrons want to sign up for newsletters or marketing information about your organization. A patron record can be created with as little as First Name, Last Name, and email address. Once this record is added to the databases it can be added easily to sales orders in the future. Also if a user goes online and uses the same email address, whatever address and phone number is used during the online transaction will be attached to that record through the constituent matching process.
• Engage your Patrons while onsite: One of the things I see a lot around the country is employees or volunteers that interact with the patrons as they move through exhibits. As these interactions are happening and patrons are showing interest in a particular topic, ask the question “Would you like to sign up to know more about exhibits like this in the future?” Altru can be access on tablets and users could not only add the patron into the database but then assign an interest to the record that could be used for marketing purposes in the future.
• Survey Patrons: Another option is to survey patrons as they attend a particular program, exhibit, or experience. On the survey, ask for information that will allow you to follow up with a client and provide them the option to opt in to receive future information from your organization. In this case you are getting direct feedback from your customers about your offerings, but also might pick up patron data along the way.

One of the ways to help increase the patron database using the three options above is to create incentive programs for internal users and patrons to complete these tasks. Award internal users for the number of patrons created in a month and you can even create a contest with daily stats updates provided through query. This not only builds your database but also keeps employees engaged in the process. It’s important to train users as to why this data is important to the organization so they buy into the process. Here is a screenshot of a sample query that will allow you to total constituents added by user:
Create a raffle for patrons that complete a survey, which provides them a reason to interact with your organization. Maybe the prize is free admission or a free membership, but with the increase in patron data we collect that free membership might turn into more paid memberships in the future.

Hopefully the above ideas will provide you some ways to increase your patron database and eventually lead to increased attendance, memberships, and donations.