Blackbaud Altru
Review of Blackbaud Altru Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs.
Overview
About Blackbaud Altru
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Blackbaud Altru Features
Blackbaud Altru Integrations
Customer Reviews
See why people love Blackbaud Altru
Adam C.
Verified UserMuseums and Institutions · 51-200 employees
A complete non-profit fundraising and ticketing tool
Initially, we saved tens of thousands of dollars migrating our POS, CRM, and online ticketing platforms to the single Altru platform. We've never regretted it. That was about seven years ago, and we're still happily using it. Altru generally does everything we want it to do. It's great for admissions and event ticketing but not a great tool for email marketing or running a gift shop, though it does send bulk emails and allows you to sell merchandise. If you have an email marketing tool or gift shop software, keep it.
- All our donor, patron, and visitor information is in one place, secure in the cloud
- We rely on Altru to keep all our sales, donor, and member records together so we can see all the ways our constituents connect with us
- This also makes reporting much easier, having all earned and contributed revenue recorded in one database
- This also makes training easier, as there's only one system that many of our staff need to learn and interact with, everyone from ticket sellers to fundraisers
- Finally, using one cloud-based system requires fewer administrators and no server hardware, streamlining staff and IT costs
- The financial and revenue setup can be intimidating, since there's a general ledger behind all the sales and revenue transactions
- A general ledger must be set up, fiscal years created, transactions mapped, payment types created, payment methods created, etc
- It can be daunting without a background in accounting or bookkeeping
- You will need a trained financial professional to help oversee the financial configuration
- Blackbaud will help you set this up initially, but you will need someone knowledgeable to oversee those parts
Why they chose it
"We talked to museums using Tessitura, and they were frustrated by their need to constantly customize it."
Breanne L.
Verified UserMuseums and Institutions · 51-200 employees
That 360 Degree View
While there are several things that I would like to see improved in Altru, I still believe it is still the best product out there for non-seated venues that need a ticketing solution. Our reporting has gotten so much better because we *can* see what members, donors, volunteers, etc have done with our institution. I find the support and ongoing education webinars that Blackbaud offers to be lacking and they need to improve their discovery process.
- The absolute best part of Altru is that it offers a 360 degree view of our constituents
- We can query on many different types of engagement with our institution to see who our donors are or how likely a member is to renew
- For frontline staff, the user interface for ticketing is easy to use and very intuitive
- Training staff is so much more pleasant with this software
- Group sales and group sales reporting are woefully underdeveloped (I will never understand why the entire group sales sales method was just left out of the Program Revenue report)
- Refunds and exchanges are also really terrible in the system
- There is no room for human error and trying to offer customer service to our constituents often results in our institution looking bad because the system just won't let us help them in a timely/efficient manner
Switched From
We switched because Patron Edge was a terrible product from the start, but also it was sunsetting and we needed a new product. Raiser's Edge has more fundraising capabilities that we wish had been included in Altru, but we do love the well-rounded product.
Why they chose it
"It was the best product to fit our many needs (admissions, education, fundraising, membership, summer camp, etc)."
Hope V.
Verified UserMuseums and Institutions · 51-200 employees
A good start but needs streamlining
I use Altru at work for creating events, inputting and checking memberships, checking orders, and checking numbers. I also often issue refunds or look things up for people.
- I like some features like copying events and being able to look up people/ orders/ information
- It is also very easy to check the history of a person/ organization
- It really isn’t user friendly
- You have to click around constantly to find things and then manually pull some information
- There should be some way to streamline it
Verified Professional
Education Management · 51-200 employees
Blackbaud Altru PowerStream
Overall experience with Blackbaud Altru it provides great point of sale transaction that creates a sense of ease by all frontline staff. I was comfortable with this experience to be honest.
- What I liked about Blackbaud Altru is that it allows a business or educational institution to manage a variety of all in one cloud based activity
- A company can manage ticketing for events, programs, membership management or attendance for a educational institution
- It is all in one platform that can be used to manage multiple events depending on the organization they can integrate this platform to manage all of their business needs
- The least I like about Blackbaud Altru is that it challenging to manage online group sales because it does not allow the organization to be very efficient in the area
- It needs to be more simplistic
Lisa S.
Verified UserMuseums and Institutions · 11-50 employees
Gotta have me some Altru
Once trained, employees are more likely to become more engaged with the product and will see the advantages of one CRM instead of bouncing from one CRM to another. Customers are happier when they don't have to wait. In fundraising, it is vital to be able to see what donors are also members or ticket buyers opening the door to the ask. Stewardship of donors is simplified with everything about the donor on the screen in front of you during a call or even on your phone on the way to a meeting. Many processes are automatic once set up correctly. And again, customer service and support are tremendous assets for Altru.
- Ability to have fundraising, ticketing, events, membership all in one CRM is amazing
- It has increased employee production, made patrons and donors happier (less waiting, ease of use), increased fundraising ability by having the ability to see who hasn't donated yet attends/purchases abundantly and relationships between constituents
- I absolutely LOVE this CRM and would only consider moving to another organization that uses the product
- Training and support are amazing
- Support is always available through knowledge base, community, videos and when really stumped, through online chat
- And they CARE about helping you with find the answers you need
- No CRM is perfect
- The canned reports aren't always easy to manipulate when downloaded while the queries can be difficult for those not using them on a regular basis
- The prospect management is not as flexible (would like the ability for one person to handle all the fundraiser's management) and can be redundant in places
- There are small glitches here and there, and the email ability from Altru is poor, but they are constantly listening to their customers to make needed improvements
Switched From
Ticketing was needed and Altru made sense handling the various aspects of the organization.
sandy t.
Verified UserNon-Profit Organization Management · 51-200 employees
Review of Blackbaud Altru
frustrating
At the time we selected it there was little else available on the market that did so much, especially of rarts organizations
Altru proved unruly to manage / non-intuitive / overly expensive, espoecially as new products came along, like Bloomerang
Switched From
cost / efficiency / ease of data input / clarity and ease of creating reports / retention focus
Vicky R.
Verified UserNon-Profit Organization Management · 2-10 employees
Great Product
Love it, helps us keep track of all of our constituents. We love how we can keep track of events, like who attended and also able to check them in.
- Very powerful tool
- It helps keep track of all donor files, events, groups
- There is so much you can do
- It pulls reports
- The courses with live teacher sometime take a while to do
Verified Professional
Non-Profit Organization Management · 51-200 employees
Endless possibilities
Teaching tools are wonderful. Possibilities feel endless. I enjoy the continuous challenge to use the program in a new way.
Ability to creatively use the data base to accomplish analysis, ticketing, membership, fundraising and interdepartmental cohesion
- This takes a long time to learn all the different features
Switched From
More integration
Lisa H.
Verified User51-200 employees
My experience with Altru began about 2 years ago. It was easy to use and had many useful features.
Reporting and database management
- I really enjoy all the reporting and smart queries Altru can produce
- It allows your job to be much easier and efficient
- I also really am impressed and appreciate the customer support
- Since I'm fairly new to Altru, I have a lot of questions
- Knowing someone is there to assist means a lot to me
- Some of the features are great but at times you have to do 5 other steps in order for something to work
- If there was a SOP for everything in Altru already created
- I'd be in heaven
William (Bill) S.
Verified User51-200 employees
After 8 years we have found the promised land!
Verified reviewer
- The support and the solution go hand in hand
- We went "live" just over 12 months and we are learning more and more everyday on how we can leverage the solution
- 100% integrated with our accounting
- Blackbaud has setup a platform that is engaging and interactive for users to connect with others in the community as well as developers
- The solution is improving and so are we
- Sometimes we find development improvements that seem critical to our organization to take longer then we would like
- But we live in a day of instant gratification and once recognized we can be patient
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