Name: Best Practices for Your Altru Policies and Procedures Guide
Uploaded: 2025-06-25T19:30:10.724Z
Duration: 1 h 8 s
Description: Best Practices for Your Altru Policies and Procedures Guide

Transcript for "Best Practices for Your Altru Policies and Procedures Guide": Hello, everybody. Welcome. There we go. I see the numbers coming up. Hello. You are in best practices for your Altru policies and procedures guide. This is part of our monthly webinar series for Altru. Hey, Everyone, I see you all popping in the chat. Nice to see you. We're gonna get started in just a moment, let a couple more folks jump on. In the meantime, would love, if you would all introduce yourselves in the chat. Let me know where you are joining from, where in the country, what organization you're from, whatever you would like to share. I see some familiar names already. While you all are doing that, I will briefly introduce myself as well. My name is Jessica Pierce, and I'm a customer success manager here at Blackbaud. I live in Lakewood, Colorado just outside of Denver. It's very nice here today. We already went through the heat wave that a lot of you are going through right now, so I'm feeling lucky for that. Oh, we've got some more Colorado joining as well. Welcome. Like I said, I'm a customer success manager here at Blackbaud. And before joining Blackbaud, I was an Altru user. I worked at a couple of museums here in Denver, State History Museum as well as an Aviation Museum, and, happy to be here on this side now helping you all out. Just a couple of quick housekeeping tips before we get started. If you're not familiar with Goldcast, the audio hopefully is coming in through your browser. If you have any issues with the audio or you don't see the slide deck or anything like that, please try refreshing or leaving and coming back in. That usually takes care of it. Oh, Colorado Railroad Museum just up the street from me in Lakewood. Nice to see you. And then this, screenshot is a little outdated, but so let me just point out a couple of the differences. You all are using the chat very well, so thank you for that. Feel free to, post some questions in there as we go on. Or if you would prefer, you can use that q and a tab as well, and I will do my best to get through your questions. And if you have any questions that I don't get to, during the session, I will follow-up with you after the call. I also wanna call out the docs tab. So there are some resources linked in that docs tab. They all got linked in one document, so you should be able to download that document and access, all the resources for today's session. Alright. We'll go ahead and get started. So I'm assuming since you all are here today, I don't need to tell you why you need a policies and procedures guide for Altru, but just to level set. You know, if you don't have a policies and procedures guide already, or you have one and you'd like to revamp it, here are some reasons you may wanna do so. So, you know, I'd love to hear from you in the chat. Have and I'm sure, I'll find some answers here. Have you ever stepped into a new role and discovered that there are no policies and procedures in place for your role? You get there and you have no idea what you're supposed to do. Right? What are your tasks that you're working on? How do you do the tasks? How do you access the things that you need to, access? I know that I have been there. Curious if you all been there as well. So why do we need to put these policies and procedures in place? So, of course, having a guide ensures consistency and accuracy across your staff. Right? Pretty basic. If you want something done a certain way, having these procedures documented will help you make sure that you're doing so. Also reduces the training time for new staff. So, again, I'm sure I'm not alone in this. There's a lot of institutional knowledge that is usually passed on through your organization, and that takes a long time to, share with new employees as they come on board. Right? So having all of that documented, having that written down somewhere will really, reduce the time spent implementing all of that that knowledge, somewhere else. Very important. Don't wanna forget about this item. Having these policies documented will help with your reporting, and then any compliance, audit readiness that you need to prepare for. You know, we don't wanna forget about the local laws and regulations that we need to abide by. So these, documents can help make sure that we're doing so. And then, of course, support institutional memory. You know, we all, love what we do, and we don't plan to go anywhere else. But if we do, we want to leave something behind for whoever steps into our role, right, and, make sure that they're set up for success. Sofia, I see your question in the chat. The handout, if you go to the docs tab, you should be able to grab that handout, and you should be able to download it with all the links in one handout. Alright. So let's start off with some best practices and compliance that every organization should consider. So I wanted to start off pretty high level. Some items to consider that are not necessarily specific to Altru. So you can take this guidance with you, you know, anywhere or whatever software you're using. These are some some items you should, consider from the start. So every nonprofit organization, whether you're arts and cultural, or any other, organization that you may find yourself at, you should have a written gift acceptance policy. And, again, this is product agnostic. This should be in place no matter, what kind of organization that you're at. The reason for this is this policy protects your organization, right, and your donors. It puts some really clear boundaries on what types of gifts that you can and cannot accept, and stops you from putting your donors in a a tough place as well. So it's beneficial on both sides. So when you're going through this gift acceptance policy, determine what types of gifts your organization will accept. You know, make sure you're aligning with your organization's mission. Right? That may influence this policy. What types of gifts you accept, what what circumstances you accept gifts in, just you wanna have this clearly defined so there's no questions among your staff. And then also this may be a little bit out of left field for some of you, but make sure you're working with your collections team if you have one if you're a museum or anyone with a physical, collection. There's a lot of overlap in these policies, so you may wanna sit down with that team, and make sure you're in alignment on your policies in that area as well. You know, outline procedures for restricted gifts, what what kind of documentation you need in order to restrict a donor's gift, what kind of in kind donations you accept, and how you enter those to the system and acknowledge them, gifts at the stock, so on and so forth. If this is really new to you, if you do not have a gift acceptance policy or you're not sure where to start, I really recommend checking out the, National Council of Nonprofits. There's a link in that resources guide to them. They have some materials you can start with, and some templates you can work off of. And then you may have a local state association. I know here in Colorado, we have an awesome nonprofit association. There's probably one in your state as well. And usually, they have some resources or sometimes some workshops you can attend on how to put together these policies. And equally as important, especially in this day and age in 2025, is your privacy policy. So I would say this is more important than ever. Certain states have very, very specific guidelines about constituent data and, how you can collect that data and what you can do with it. So if you're not familiar with this already, take some time familiar familiarize yourself, excuse me, with your state's, rules, laws, anything that's gone into effect. Again, your your local nonprofit association is another great resource for this. They may have some webinars about any new changes that have gone into place that you can, keep an eye on. So consider how donor and constituent data is handled. And, you know, a lot of you, I know, are children's museums on the call or you have memberships with children's on them. This is always a a hot topic. Do you have specific policies in place for data related to children? So any children that are on a membership or attending your summer camps, anything like that, make sure you know how you can handle that data and what you can do with it. Make sure you're familiar with the data retention and deletion policies. Again, this may be state specific, so you definitely want to take some time and review that. And do you know, for example, what to do if a donor reaches out to you and wants you to remove their information from your system? Make sure you have a policy in place for that and and how that's handled. Another reason, a little more Altru specific that this privacy policy is important. If you are sending out any kind of, communications from Altru, any emails to donors or ticket buyers or anything like that, you're required to include a link to that privacy policy. So, you know, you wanna have one that you can link to. So make sure it's, visible on your website, it's accessible, and, folks can find it. So to follow-up on that and, again, there should be a link to this in that resources document. If you have never seen this page before, this is Blackbaud's privacy resource center. It has a lot of great resources for you. It provides product specific documentation for Altru. So, for example, how to handle certain requests from your constituents, if they want to opt out of communications, if they want to have their information removed, if they want to see a report of what information you have in your database, again, that that may be required by the state that you're located in. We have some resources for that and how to accomplish that in Altru. There's also, again, product agnostic resources about privacy laws applicable in certain states. So when you're building out these policies in your guide, you may wanna refer to this documentation that's in the policy I'm sorry. The privacy resource center, to help you inform that. Alright. We're gonna move on to Altru specific. Let me do a quick scan for any questions before we do that. Hey, Kelly. Kelly asked, is the slide deck included in the docs file? It is not, Kelly. I believe when you get the link to the recording for the session, you should be able to grab the slides from there. And if not, if you want a copy of the slide deck, if you just want to drop a note in the chat, I will make sure you get a copy after the session as well. Just maybe say, hey, Jessica. I'd like the slide deck or something so I know what you're asking for when I go back through the chat, but, happy to make sure you get that as well. And I didn't see anybody ask yet, but, yes, this is recorded. And you should get a link to the recording probably tomorrow as well if you wanna go back and take a look. Awesome. Okay. No more questions. So let's go ahead and move on to some policies and procedures that are more specific to Altru. So if you're getting started, again, if you're building a brand new policies and procedures guide, you may be wondering how to organize it and how to get started. Right? So, it may be helpful for you to, when you're starting with your data entry policies and procedures, to sort them into sections. Right? You have a lot of users in Altru that are performing different tasks, so they may have, specific policies that apply only to them. So, for example, break it down by the different types of, sales methods or data entry points in Altru, true daily sales, advanced sales, group sales, and back office. These all have, different use cases, and they're used by different teams at your organization. So you really want to analyze the workflows for each of these areas. So for example, you know, you need a policy for opening a drawer in daily sales. You need a policy for how to create a reservation in group sales, so on and so forth. Right? So define these workflows for each area and consider who's in charge of entering the data and who's in charge of any exceptions. So an example of that is for daily sales, who's in charge of approving discounts, any refunds, do you accept refunds, what do you accept refunds on, so on and so forth. So you may need to get a little bit in the weeds on this, and you may need to spend some time with these teams. Right? So if you are, in the back office a lot and you haven't spent a lot of time at the front desk and and seeing what they do every day, this is a a good time to do some cross training. Right? And see what their current, workflow is like so we can document it and maybe improve upon it. Right? So everyone's gonna feel a little bit more empowered when they know what they're in charge of, what they're responsible for, and when they need to ask for help, right, or when they need to escalate something. Make sure this is a great place to include any, reconciliation or end of day procedures. So closing drawers, running your deposits, and then, maybe for the first thing in the day, reviewing new constituent data that's coming into Altru. Right? So that may seem like an odd thing to put in your policies and procedures guide, but somebody in your organization should be in charge of that. Right? Somebody should be reviewing things that are coming in, whether it's from the front desk or it's from online sales, and they should be, you know, maybe they're in charge of kind of coaching team members on how to, improve their data entry, or maybe they're just in charge of looking for certain, things and taking care of them before they go unnoticed for too long. So, again, if you want that to be somebody specific duty, make sure to call that out in your policies and procedures guide. So constituent data. This is usually the the meat of what we are building our policies around. Right? And, again, you you wanna have your your privacy policy in place before you even get here because you need to know what kind of data you're even allowed to collect, where you're allowed to put it in Altru, who has access to it. You should have all of that ironed out before you even get to this point. Right? So that's why I say start at the high level, start at the the most important things that you have to make sure you're following, and then we can get down, into the nitty gritty of how to put things into Altru. So, again, like I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of different, sources that data is coming from in Altru. Right? You've got, folks buying tickets online, entering their own data. You have folks at the front desk. You have back office staff entering batches. So for everybody that we we can get on board, right, we can't necessarily make our constituents do what we would like them to, but for everybody in your organization, we can standardize how names, addresses, and titles, if you are collecting them, are entered. The reason I call out titles in particular, you may wanna consider your policies and procedures. Do you even want to collect titles? Is this a required field for your organization, or are are we going away from that? I see more and more organizations that have, stepped away from this. Right? First of all, they don't want to make mistakes, and incorrect address someone with the incorrect title. Sometimes they're just trying to be a little more modern. Right? But just make sure whatever you decide to align your name formats with this. And what I mean by that is if your organization has decided not to collect titles, then you probably don't want the formal name format as the default because that's when you're gonna start ending up with some, messy data pulls for your addresses and salutations. So once again, start at the high level. Start with your policy. Right? How to collect this information or if you're collecting it, and then work work down from there into how that's going to be reflected in Blackbaud Altru. Some other examples of constituent data you may wanna consider, policies for collecting genders or not. Maybe you have a policy for using some attribute form extensions for collecting other information like pronouns, anything that doesn't have a field already defined in Blackbaud Altru. Have a policy for how you are defining relationships and households. You know, when do you build a household? When do you put two constituents together in a household or more? And how do you identify those relationships between constituents? Again, once you've outlined what you want in that policy, then you can work down from there and build out those code tables in Blackbaud Altru, make sure they're reflective of your policies so everyone can can use what they need to use. And then the ceasing, don't forget this. When you were when you're building out some procedures about constituent data, unfortunately, there there comes a time when we have to mark constituents as deceased, and there may be certain things that you want to do as part of that process. So do you want to, require certain documentation, right, like a link to an obituary or a notice from a family member, or something like that when before marking a constituent deceased. So this, speaking of the ceasing, constituents and relationships, once you've built out these policies, you can, use the life changes section of Altru. Again, this is an area that I see underutilized. A lot of times this is set up an implementation and nobody goes back in there ever again. So you can access this through the constituents tab in Altru. You can define some rules in your database, for certain things that happen when you, mark a constituent as deceased or when you create a spousal relationship, for for two constituents. So you can have some things happen automatically. For example, do you wanna mark deceased constituents inactive? Do you want to make any changes to name formats or relationships? So let the database help you with these things. Right? Go in and make sure those settings are reflective of what you'd like them to be. I see a couple of questions on that. So Kelly asked, Altru automatically assigns male, female, based on names. Is it possible to turn that off if we wanted? Unfortunately, Kelly, no. That's that's not possible right now. I'll definitely pass along that feedback to our product team. So you can go in there and change it if you would like to on a particular to a record, but it's not possible to turn off the the automatic name formats automatic genders. Excuse me. Chris asked if you have any sample policies or templates, for these things to use. So we do have some, some specific templates that we use for, implementations, Chris. So that is something, I would love to pass on as well. That didn't make it to the docs tab. If you would like to get some copies of those, please drop me a note in the chat. Again, if you would be specific, that would help me a lot where I'm getting these resources back out to you. Alright. So we talked a lot about constituent data. I think that's what we think of a lot when we think of policies and procedures. But another really important area in Altru that you may want to document, some rules for are the programs and events in your database. So as we know, there are several types of programs and events in Altru, special events, preregistered programs, so on and so forth, daily admission. And so some organizations may need to standardize the creation of these programs, and ensure that they've been created, correctly and within your your guidelines before going live to the public. So, consider depending on the side of you size of your organization, you know, consider if you would like program and event creation to live with a specific team or a specific team member at your organization, or if it's something you'd like each department to handle on their own. So I'll give you an example. At one of my organizations, there was, one person in charge of building all programs and events in Altru no matter what they were because we had very strict standards about, how the categories were used, who reviewed things before they went live on our website, so on and so forth. So we had a form that we filled out to request that someone build that that program for us. I've seen it the other way. I've seen, you know, some organizations where membership's in charge of building out their member events, developments in charge of building out their own special events, maybe even the volunteer team has their own events. So whatever you decide, there's no right or wrong answer there. Just make sure it's clear. And if especially if everybody is in charge of their own programming, make sure there's some guidelines or some steps for them to follow. So you still may wanna have that checklist, or that form that they go through just to make sure everything's all good, before that program goes live to the world. So you may consider naming conventions for your program categories if you are using these. And if you are not using categories for your programs and events, I would encourage you to do so. It can make queries and reporting a little bit easier. So, know, maybe have some guidelines in place for what categories your events go into. Discounts. Do you have any, policies you'd like to document about who receives discounts? So, you know, when is a member discount applicable? Do you have a standard percent on all programs, or does it fluctuate from program to program? Do any other groups receive discounts on programs? So just just think about these when you're when you're documenting this policy. On sale date, again, do you have a standard on, how far out programs need to be created and when they go on sale? And then website approval, who has the final say in, pushing the button, so to speak, and, making programs and events live on your website into the general public. Alright. Gift processing. This is usually one of the the bulkiest sections most bulky sections of your policies and procedures guide. Right? There's there's a lot, to consider with gift processing in Blackbaud. So this is one of the most important functions of any development team at any organization, not just arts and cultural. Right? So when you're building out your policies and procedures, for this area, first consider who is responsible for entering gifts. So, again, is this one person at your organization? Do you have a specific gift processor? Do you have multiple multiple individuals or multiple teams that can do this? And if so, what are the policies that they all need to follow? Right? So, what information do they need to collect, when they're entering a gift either through the back office or through batch? So I would, recommend fleshing out some some procedures for recognition credits or or soft credits. Again, this is something you can, work out in Blackbaud for some automatic recognition credits for spouses, for example. But if you have other cases where you need to consider recognition credits, definitely document that. Solicitor credits. So, you know, I I see this being a little underutilized, I would say, in Altru. If you have solicitors or fundraisers that need to receive credit for, acquiring, stewarding, and obtaining gifts at your organization, make sure you have a policy on when those solicitors get credit for those gifts. Another example of that is if you have a board give get program at your organization, you might use list or credits to track that. Linking to appeals, you know, is this something that is required at your organization? Should all gifts be linked to an appeal? Should only certain gifts be linked to an appeal? And how do you how do you find the appeals that gift should be linked to? So is this clearly documented on a reply device, for example? Again, you may want to think about your your broader processes and reflect them in your your gift processing, policies and procedures. So kind of along those lines, you know, document who at your organization is in charge of, both appeals and designations. So if you need to create a new one, if there's not an existing designation for something in your fundraising hierarchy and you receive a check out of nowhere for some very obscure program at your organization, who do you reach out to to, create that new designation, and, how does it need to fit into your hierarchy? So, again, you may need a specific section that just delves into your fundraising hierarchy a bit. And then same thing if there's, you know, someone needs to create a new appeal for a new campaign. Who's in charge of doing that? Do you have any specific naming conventions for appeals, categories again? I can't recommend that enough. Just just think through who's in charge of that whole process as well. And then very important, right, think about your acknowledgment process. So do gifts, made towards a certain designation receive a specific letter? How fast your acknowledgments need to go out, you know, what is your turnaround time on getting those in the mail, what information do you need to, include on your acknowledgment letters. So you may want to, again, document all this so everybody's on the same page, and then you can build out your acknowledgment process in Altru to reflect that. One thing that isn't really called out on this slide, it was mentioned briefly on an earlier slide. Again, especially this is becoming more and more common, as we get through 2025 and I'm sure next year as well. We probably want some specific policies and procedures for donor advised funds and gifts that you receive from those. So gifts that you receive from a, community foundation or, you know, something like Fidelity or anything like that. This is where reporting can get really, really challenging if you have different folks entering these gifts in different ways. Right? And it can be kinda difficult to track it down and untangle it later. So I'd strongly recommend having a really clear policy in place for for how those gifts are, entered and managed. Oh, and, most importantly, make sure you're consulting with your finance team on this. So, again, you know, we mentioned earlier, go and talk to your, front desk team. Right? Go to talk to your collections team. This is a case where you wanna talk to your finance team, especially when you're documenting policies for, how you accept certain gifts or how you enter certain gifts and then also designations. This is gonna impact them, right, when they get that reporting, when they need to enter that into their financial system, when everybody needs to be on the same page about how much money you've received or what designation. So, you know, make friends with your finance team, and build out some policies that, help support both teams development and finance. Right? Make sure you're all on the same page with that. And, again, go back to that gift acceptance policy. Right? That's gonna inform, again, what types of gifts you're accepting and how you're entering them in all true, most likely. Alright. I'm gonna pause for a minute. We're building up some q and a, so let's take a look at that. Mary asked, can a foundation be connected to an individual in Blackbaud Blackbaud Altru without creating two different profiles? Mary, if I understand your, question correctly, you want maybe, like, a non constituent record for the foundation. That's something that is some some CRMs do that. Blackbaud Blackbaud Altru is a little bit different. Everybody has a constituent constituent record in Blackbaud Blackbaud Altru. So, typically, you're gonna have a record for the individual, and you're gonna have a record for the foundation. Yeah. Abby has a good point. You could just create a a secondary address for the foundation. You know, again, I I would consider your own policies about this if you want to report on, you know, donor advised donor advised funds, gifts that you're receiving from a specific foundation, you also need to consider how you're acknowledging those gifts, and and what record you're entering those gifts on. You know, are you entering it on the foundation record or are you entering out on the donor records? So, again, different organizations do this a little bit differently. But depending on your your policy and procedure, you may want to have a a specific record in Altru for that foundation. Mary also asked, can acknowledgments be sent automatically through Altru? So you can send out acknowledgments via email in Altru. You are gonna have to go in you can run the process and set that up on a schedule, but you are gonna have to go in and and send the emails out. So if that's once a week or once a day, you know, just work that into your processes. Another thing I would recommend on that front, and it's it's kinda going a little off off the script here. Take a look at that automatic acknowledgment email that's going out from Altru as well. So if someone makes a donation online to your organization, you can edit that particular acknowledgment email that's going out so you can edit that for specific forms in Altru. So take a look at that and see, you know, what information you want to include in that that email that they receive as soon as they make a gift. Okay. Kelly asked, is it a bad practice to add secondary members as the spouse even if they are not an actual spouse? We allow members to be on a membership with anyone, not always a spouse. This has helped us, with salutations and addresses, see more clearly that there's a secondary member on the membership, but I'm not sure if there's a better practice. Kelly, that's that's a great question, and you kind of already, said one thing that I was going to say is one thing that the spousal relationship in Altru does control are those those automatic name formats that are built for you. Right? So when you build your name formats, you can have it include the spouse. So I don't know if if Blackbaud has an official recommendation on this. I can, you know, ask ask some team members, Kelly, and and get back to you. I would say if you are choosing to, use that spousal relationship for non spouses, just make sure you've you've really clearly documented why. So exactly what you said. You know, you have two members in the same household. It just make it a little bit tricky if you do have an actual spousal relationship. You want them to receive, you know, soft credits for each other's gifts or things like that. So, that's one one thing you might get a little, mixed up on because that's another thing that that spousal relationship controls in in Altru is, the the soft credits. And, Kelly, that's actually a question that I would maybe put in the Altru community if you haven't been there before and see what other organizations are doing or or if you all wanna chat about that, amongst yourselves in the chat as well. I'm curious. I I'm certain there's probably other organizations that are doing that as well. Alright. Alright. I'm gonna answer one more question and we're gonna move on. If I didn't get to your question again, I will make sure to get to it, after the session. But, Mary also asked, is there a way to make sure that a person does not have multiple profiles? I'm assuming, Mary, referring to duplicates in Altru. Yes. There are definitely some best practices and procedures there. You have some constituent matching processes that you can set up to search for, duplicates in Altru and help you manage those and merge them as they come up. Mary, that's something I would recommend maybe reaching out to your customer success manager to help get you some resources on on the best practices, for that. And, Mary, if you're not sure who your customer success manager is and and you'd like, to be connected to them, drop me a note in the chat. Alright. So we talked a lot about data entry in Altru. We talked about gift processing, and we talked about some really high level compliance, all the fun privacy stuff. Right? So, one thing you want to make sure to account for or two things, I should say, that you want to account for in your policies and procedures guides are system rules and access. This is something that I know I get a lot of questions about, system roles in Altru. Everything in Altru is controlled by different system roles. So it's really important to get a handle on these. And, you know, actually, I'd I'd love to hear from you all in the chat if you wanna chime in. Have you ever started in a new job and you met with your new boss and they gave you a list or, like, I'd like you to do these 10 things and you get into the system and find out that you don't have access and you can't do the things that you've been, tasked with doing, and you have to work backwards a little bit and figure out how to get access. Again, I know that's definitely happened to me, and sometimes it's a bit too entangled. So to help mitigate that at your organization, I would recommend adding a section to your policies and procedures guide that, specifically covers onboarding, offboarding, and training new employees. So for onboarding, when someone new joins your organization and they they need to get all set up, who at your organization is in charge of adding new employees to both Blackbaud.com and Altru. Right? There's a there's a bit of a two step process there. So who takes care of that at your organization? And do you have some sort of formal request process that you need to go through with your HR, or you just send an email to, you know, so and so at your organization and ask them to do that. And then what system roles do you assign to new users? In that resources guide on the docs, there should be a link about what system roles to assign to users in Altru. You know, some there's we do have some recommendations there on what system roles should be assigned, but sometimes this is a little bit of trial and error. You know, you may find that somebody's role expands and you need to grant them, another role in order to accomplish a certain task in Altru. So I see this happen a lot where, folks attend a webinar like this, and then they try to do something new and fun in Altru, like, run their address finder process or build out some prospect plans, and they find that they can't see that part of Altru. That is all system roles. Right? So, again, you know, define what system roles you want to give access to and also who is in charge of, of doing that. And then you may want to consider, what training is required for each role. So if you have a new, visitor services agent, for example, Is there certain training that you would like them to complete, before they get in there and, get started with Altru? And this may be, Blackbaud University training. This may be training specific to your organization. Right? So just just document that out if you have a certain, curriculum or path that you would like them to work through. And then on the, less fun side, you know, we may want to have some policies and definitely want to have some policies and procedures in place for off boarding employees. So, this is important for security. Right? You want to, lock down access to certain things in your organization and your database is certainly one of those things. So, when someone leaves your organization, who is in charge of inactivating those users both in Altru and on Blackbaud.com. So, again, this is something I see a lot. You've you've removed access in one place but not the other. You may wanna have a a checklist, and this may be beyond Blackbaud or Altru. Right? This may be other systems that you're using as well. But who goes through that list and make sure that everybody is removed when they need to be removed? Right. Then if you have somebody, that's leaving your organization that performed some really critical tasks, especially if they were the only person, performing those tasks, how do you reassign those tasks and roles? So, who determines who's going to take over those roles until someone else, comes on board at your organization? This is especially important if you have someone, that is either a Altru admin or a Blackbaud.com admin that's leaving your organization. You don't want to be left without one of those. Right? So you may wanna have a backup plan. You may wanna make sure that you always have at least two. Right? So somebody can, take care of things if the other one leaves. But, again, you don't want to give out this access too freely either. So just just maybe document how what that workflow, looks like if those admins leave your organization. And then, you know, maybe a good time to just double check, look through your user list. If you are already an admin, make sure all the users look good, make sure everybody is up to date, and then make sure, again, you still have a a solution or an organization admin. And then this is a good place to consider any ongoing training for your your users. You could keep this, pretty restricted to Altru if that's what your your policies and procedures guide is reflecting. Or, again, it may be broader for your organization. Right? It may include, other required training, you know, maybe some nonprofit best practice courses, anything that you want to make sure that your employees are taken care of on a regular basis, documenting it, make sure there's no surprises. Right? Everybody knows what they need to do, and they they feel empowered to go and and take that training on their own. So since we're talking about, access and kind of configuration tasks in Altru, I want to just take a quick moment to talk about code tables. So, we mentioned this a little bit earlier. When you are putting certain things into place in Altru, for example, relationship types, things like that, you may need to add or edit code tables in Altru. And this is something that, I've seen can become very cluttered if it's not properly maintained. This is something that goes back to system roles and access as well. If, too many people at your organization have access to edit code tables, things can get a little a little wonky. Right? So sometimes folks will type things in there that they didn't mean to. You may end up with, you know, code two different code tables that are basically the same thing and and folks aren't sure which one to use, you know, for example, price types, address types, things like that. So, you know, again, consider documenting who can add or edit new code tables at your organization. Again, is there a, process that you go through to do that, for certain users empowered to to take care of this on their own. And what's that policy for requesting edits or additions? And and most of the time, this is going to be related to price types, I would say. You get a lot of requests for new price types, maybe other payment methods. That's another one that comes up a lot, if you need to enter gifts from another source into Altru. And group types is another common one. So if you're using group sales for field trips, facility rentals, things like that, group types can get a little a little out of hand too if we're not keeping an eye on it. And you might also want to consider a process for auditing these code tables on a regular basis, making sure, there nothing errant has been entered in there. So, again, make sure someone hasn't entered somebody's address as an address type or an email address as an email address type. It happens. We all make mistakes, so you may just want to, keep an eye on that, make sure, you're cleaning this up as you come across them because it can impact your reporting in Altru, and you're also storing data where it's not meant to be stored. Alright. Let's have some final takeaways, and then we'll review some questions. So, again, when you're sitting down to build these policies and procedures guides or you are reviewing your existing guides, for the first time in a while, I recommend that you, first and foremost, break down the silos at your organization. So these are policies and procedures that you are going to be, implementing across teams. Right? Lots of different people in your organization use Altru. They all have their own goals. They all have their own, priorities and and methods for doing things. So, you know, make sure that everybody feels heard as part of this process, and they have an opportunity to contribute. Maybe they also have an opportunity to tighten up the process so it make things it makes things a little bit easier on their teams. Right? Maybe we can reduce some extra steps for them, or maybe we're not keeping track of something that we need to be keeping track of. So, again, let's bring everybody to the table. Let's hash it out. Let's, share that guide across teams and and let everybody have a stake in it. Once you've been through that whole process, you may need to then narrow down the ownership a little bit. Right? So once everything's put into place, who at your organization is responsible for maintaining these policies and procedures? Again, I highly recommend having more than one person, but not too many people. Right? You don't want the only person in charge of your policies and procedures to leave the organization and and have all that hard work go to waste. Right? So have have at least a couple of folks at your organization that, that are responsible for for taking care of it, maintaining it, and updating, the guide as necessary. And that kind of brings us into the next bullet point. You know, make sure you are updating that guide as necessary. You don't want to be constantly making changes to it, but you also want to have the flexibility to do so if needed. So, again, going back to the very beginning, the state privacy laws that that we're seeing, these are changing all the time. Every year, there's a new state that that has some new privacy laws that are impacting some some level of data collection. Right? So you may need to update your policies, to reflect that. Or you may find that something's not working. Right? You have documented a process for entering things in a certain way, and and it's just not working. So, have a have a process where you can review that and make changes as necessary. So stay organized. Right? Make it easy for everybody at your organization to find the guide and to find what's relevant to them. Right? So maybe not every user at your organization needs access to everything, but they need access to, the policies and procedures that they need to do their job. So make sure they know where to find it. Maybe you all have a SharePoint drive, a team's channel. Maybe you're old school and you printed out a bunch of different binders for everybody. You know, whatever works for you all. Just make sure everybody knows where to go and where to find it. And, again, accept feedback. You know, if if something's not working, if something needs to be adjusted, it's not personal. Right? It's just, something needs to to be reviewed, and we just need to take another look at it. So, we can put a lot of work into these things and and still find some bumps along the way. So be open to feedback and be open to, making adjustments. And then one, just word of caution I I wanna leave with everybody with. We've talked a lot about privacy. I I wanna say when you're building these policies and procedures guides, it's great to include some screenshots, so folks can see how things should be entered into Altru, but be very cautious. Again, you have lots of users at your organization that have access to this information. If you've printed it out, you know, who knows where it's at? So avoid using constituent data or other sensitive information in in these policies and procedures guide. You may even need to build, you know, a couple of test records in Altru just to document how to to enter certain things into Altru. Just just be really mindful of what you are capturing from your database and what you are sharing across, other teams. Alright. And we made it, you all. That takes us to the end. So I am gonna do a little review and see if we have any other questions that, got missed. Alright. Q and a. Mary said, how can we delete duplicate accounts with wrong information if the profile has been used at all? The system won't let us delete it. Mary, there is certain information that if it's on a record in Altru, for example, sales orders, payment, any kind of payment, Altru is you're correct. Altru is not gonna let you delete that record. We do have some, guidelines for how to handle that if you truly need to delete the record. First and foremost, I would say consider if you are able to make that record inactive. But if but if it's a duplicate and you need to merge it and you're running into errors, again, Mary, I I would connect with your customer success manager to to help point you in the right direction there. And I saw your note in the chat, Mary. I'll get you connected with your with your CSM. Let's see. Dibar. Hello? Dibar asked, is there a way to set the name formats globally so all my records are configured the same? Yes. You can configure your name formats in Altru. You can go in there and adjust those. The one caveat to that is it will only, change rec new records going forward. So new records that are created in the system will adhere to the new name format that you've set up. It will not, go back and globally change, the name formats that are already in your system. So if that's something you'd like to do, a couple of options are, creating a query and going in and clearing cleaning those up. There's also a data service through Blackbaud. There's a additional cost for that, but there is a data service that can run on the back end for you. So if that's something that you're interested in, I would reach out to your customer success manager about that as well. Let's see. That should be everybody in the q and a. I'm gonna do a quick scan of the chat. And, again, if I miss you all, I promise to get back to you after the session. Allison asked an interesting question. I see related to sensitive constituent data, is it common to get phishing constituents added to the database? These seem to be false profiles with wonky emails and addresses. I've never been sure hand how to handle these. Allison, that's a great question. I haven't seen that come up before. I'm assuming that's coming from your your web forms. You've got, some some folks signing up on your web forms with false information. I would be curious. Are they making any kind of small transaction, like a small donation? That's something if you all have experience with that, feel free to to maybe drop a note for Allison in the chat there. Let's see. And, Allison, I would say, you know, if you know for sure that those are those are false and there's no sales order attached to them, or or even if there is a sales order attached, you know, maybe review that with your team, see if you're willing to make that record inactive or if that's something that we need to look at. Again, that credit card charge, if there is one. Yeah. I am curious to see if anybody else has any comments about that. Nina said we don't do videos yet, but our procedures have screenshots of the steps so it's easier for them to follow along. I love that, Nina. I think that, screenshots help a lot. You know, sometimes you need to see something in action in order to do it. So, I like that a lot. Again, just always be mindful of what's, included in in those screenshots. Yeah. And I think you all have a little chatter going on about creating videos or walk throughs of processes. I love that. If you all have a a tool that you're using to capture that too, I'd be very curious if you all wanna share that with each other in the chat. Another Jessica uses Blackbaud webinars to create relevant training resources for our welcome center staff. Love that. See a couple of you asking for your customer success manager information. Again, I will I will connect you all as well. Love the chatter here. It's nice to see what you all are doing. Karen, I may have missed your donor advised question. If I don't see it, I will make sure to reach out to you after the session. So, again, if I missed your question, I'm sorry y'all. It's it's just me here today. I don't have any moderators, so thank you for your patience. And I will make sure to go back through the chat and, get to your session or your question, excuse me, afterwards. Alright. And as we're wrapping up, say thank you all for joining today. Thank you for listening to me talk about, fun topics for an hour here. Our next monthly webinar will be on July 30, and believe it or not, it's about preparing for your annual appeal in Altru. We will be emailing out a link to that session soon, so keep an eye out for that. We'd love to have you join us. And on that note, just wanna say thank you all again for joining. Please grab my email address if you'd like to. If you have any questions, anything you wanna ask that, we didn't get to today. Happy to help or happy to connect you with your customer success manager if I can. So, again, please grab that email address, make use of it. I am here to help. Thank you. Again, you'll get a copy a link to the recording tomorrow, get you all the slides, and I will go through the questions, make sure we took care of of everybody today. So thank you so much. Stay cool, everybody, and have a great afternoon.