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.

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.

I know a good amount how to deal with things on Altru, but if something comes up that you don't know, it's not always self-explanatory how to get done what you need to get done. Sometimes you have click on quite a series of things that you would never things to click on to make something happen. That being said, it doesn't seem to glitch often, which is nice. Again, having all the needed resources right there in one software is a helpful.

I love the amount that you can do on Altru and that it can all be done in one place. Whether it's keeping our volunteers organized, scheduling tours, selling event tickets, etc., it can all be done right there in Altru.

There are multiple ways you can do everything. Rather than having one concise way to do each action, you have to search to find many not simple ways to do everything. Sometimes, screens look slightly different on different computers as well, even though they've all been updated. It's amazing how much you can do, but it would be so much easier if the methods used were more concise.

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.

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.

In my role, I primarily use Altru for scheduling programs, both onsite and offsite. We've had to develop creative solutions for complex scheduled programs like field trips and outreach visits, but more straightforward scheduled events were easy to implement. The ability to maintain a large database of individual constituents and organizations is very helpful for scheduling. Prior to implementing Altru, we used an in-house built legacy system that was impossible to maintain, and after the initial launch pains it has been a great improvement.

Queries and exports are very helpful. The ability to maintain and manage a large database of constituents is an essential function for us. Blackbaud support and training materials are wonderful.

Altru is not intuitive to use, and was very intimidating for my team. There is one major flaw where you can too-easily delete an entire program with all of its events when you intend to only delete one event. This can be avoided by selling a ticket to any of the events, but happens sometime for us when a program is used to populate an internal calendar. Another flaw is that sales orders will sometimes glitch and get sent to "unresolved sales orders" with no notification, and unless checked regularly can be overlooked.

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.

Covers every aspect of museum data management, from fundraising to programs to events and more. Excellent customization of data queries to manage data and run reports. Offers many levels of depth, to serve both front-line staff and power users.

Little/no training and support offered until very recently. Limited customization of layout, view options, colors, and categories in constituent records. Sometimes requires many, many clicks to achieve simple goals/record changes/reports.

Blackbaud Altru has many types of uses, from POS to Donation center, the system has functions for every part of our staff in our museum, from Admissions to events and fundraising.

The system is extremely difficult to work with - the system is complicated to set up memberships, membership renewals, ticket sales, and unfortunately, doesn't work well with other systems since it was first created so long ago... There are manuals and courses to learn about the system, but they are very time consuming, taking 3 hours or more per course sometimes.

We now have the ability to get a true look at all the ways our constituents are interacting with our organization. Prior to implementation, our organization was very siloed, with each department using separate databases.

The product has a long way to go with the web forms and email functionality. It would be great to have usable metrics for online behavior.

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.

I have been using Altru for about a year in a database management position. There were so many training resources available when I first started, and continued support from our account manager and chat support. There is an article for every problem I could run into. It has been a great experience learning how to use this database and implementing the use of awesome features that we weren't previously using!

I love that my company doesn't have to have many different databases to perform various tasks. Altru allows us to have a complete 360 view of our organization and our customers. We use it for all of our CRM needs - ticketing, programs, special events, donors, memberships, revenue reporting, etc. The support available through the parent company Blackbaud is so helpful for working out the kinks, as well.

This software is very expensive. Especially since the primary organizations who use Altru are non-profits.

The RISD Museum has been using Altru for almost 3 years. While some aspects of the product could use improvement specifically web forms, email analytics, and merchandise there are many ways that Altru rocks: 1. The conversion of our old data went very smoothly. The database experts at Blackbaud were extremely helpful and knowledgeable. 2. Second, Altru is very easy to use. Our Visitor Services staff was up and running at the front desk with only an introductory session and some in-person support that first week. 3. Altru tech support at Blackbaud has been more responsive and helpful than any other software company I've worked with. They understand my work, not just the software. 4. You don't have to be a database expert to become an expert at Altru. My team members have taken ownership of their data and processes. I love sitting in a meeting and having someone else say, "Did you know you can do this in Altru? Here's what I'm doing and I think it will work for you." 5. Blackbaud is actively trying to improve the product. I've personally been involved with discovery by development teams working on reporting/queries and security/access. 6. The Altru Community is very active and supportive. Often, I don't need an answer to how the software works. I know how to make the software work but sometimes there are multiple right ways to do something. So my question is more about best practices and how others are doing it. It's helpful to hear what has worked at similar organizations and what hasn't. The bottom line is that there are pluses and minuses with any enterprise system. We evaluated six different systems before selecting Altru and chose based on what we thought would work best for our organization, our team members, and our business processes. As someone once told me, when you buy an enterprise system, you're not just buying software, you're also buying a business model. It turns out that Altru does, indeed, work well for the RISD Museum.

What Altru does really well for arts & cultural organizations, that other CRMs do not have the ability to do, is create a holistic view of your constituents - ticket buyers, donors, event attendees, etc. Everything is in one database, and there is no need to deal with various imports and exports in order to view your data in one place. Some areas of the system lack flexibility and depth - web forms, ticketing - however Blackbaud releases new features on a very regular basis, so it's constantly improving.

Brings together ticketing and fundraising/membership in one CRM Helpful Support available to chat online

More flexibility needed with web forms More flexibility needed with fundraising reporting Sales Orders are too rigid - need to be able to edit and add appeal codes

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