A gala, a benefit dinner, a members-only fundraiser after hours: these look like ticketed events, but they behave like gifts. Part of each ticket pays for dinner and part is a donation, the price usually comes in tiers (individual, couple, table, sponsor), and finance wants every dollar to land on the right designation. Getting all of that to work online in Altru takes some planning before you build anything.
This guide covers the decisions to make first, the two common ways to build the event, and how to think about designations and fees so your reports and tax receipts come out right.
Decide what kind of event this really is
Altru gives you more than one place to sell admission to something, and the choice shapes everything downstream. Before you open Altru, answer three questions on paper:
- Is the revenue mostly a contribution or mostly a sale? A $250 gala ticket with a $75 dinner is mostly a gift. A $20 evening lecture is mostly a sale.
- Do you need guest names for every seat? Seating charts, meal choices, and name badges mean you need registrant-level data, not just a count of tickets sold.
- How many price levels will you offer, and does each carry a different benefit? A sponsor table that includes recognition and eight seats is a different thing from eight individual tickets.
If the answers point toward “gift, named guests, distinct levels,” you’re describing a fundraising event, and it should be set up so the contribution side is tracked as revenue to a fund, not just as admission income.
Two common ways to build it
Option 1: Altru’s event and registration setup
Altru’s events functionality lets you create an event with multiple registration options, each with its own price. This is the natural fit for tiered fundraisers because each tier can be its own option, and registrants are tied to constituent records so you can track who’s coming, who they’re bringing, and what they gave.
The question to test early is the online piece. How well registration options with several price levels can be sold through an Altru web form depends on your version and configuration, and organizations report different experiences. Build a test event in your sandbox (or a clearly labeled test event in production), add every tier, and try to buy each one through the web form as a guest would. If a tier can’t be purchased online the way you need, you’ll know before invitations go out. Blackbaud support can confirm what your current version supports.
Option 2: Sell it like a program with price types
Some teams set the fundraiser up as a ticketed program in advance sales, with one price type per tier. This tends to be easier to put online because it uses the same ticketing path your general admission already uses.
The trade-off is that a ticket sale is a sale. Unless you handle the contribution portion separately, the full amount may be reported as earned revenue rather than giving, and guest-level details like meal choice need to be captured somewhere else. If you go this route, talk to your finance lead about how the donation portion will be recognized before you build it.
Designations and the deductible portion
This is where most fundraising-event setups go wrong, and it’s worth getting agreement from finance and development before building anything.
- Pick the designation for the event revenue. Usually that’s a fund or campaign specific to the event (for example, the annual gala fund), so you can report total raised without filtering through every transaction.
- Record the fair market value of what guests receive. Dinner, drinks, and entertainment reduce the deductible amount. Set up benefits with their value so each tier’s receipt shows the correct deductible portion. A $500 sponsor ticket with a $100 dinner should acknowledge $400 as deductible.
- Decide where fees go. If you charge a separate registration or service fee, decide whether it’s event revenue, an operating fee, or something else, and give it its own designation or GL mapping. Don’t let it quietly fold into the gift amount, because that inflates the deductible figure on receipts.
- Check your acknowledgment. Run a test purchase for each tier and look at the receipt or acknowledgment letter it generates. The deductible amount and the event name should be right on every one.
If you’re unsure how a specific combination of registration options, benefits, and designations will post in your configuration, test it, then pull the transactions into a query and compare against what your accountant expects. It’s much easier to fix a setup than to reclass hundreds of gifts after the event.
A short pre-launch checklist
- Every tier exists, has the right price, and can be purchased online.
- Each tier’s benefit value is set, and test receipts show the correct deductible amount.
- Event revenue posts to the event designation; any separate fee posts where finance expects.
- Capacity limits are set per tier if sponsor tables or VIP seats are limited.
- Guest names and meal choices have a place to live, either on the registration or in a follow-up step.
- A query or report lists registrants by tier so the event team can build seating without exporting from three places.
Where Social Good fits
The setup decisions above all happen in Altru, and that’s where the event data should stay. If the online buying experience is the sticking point, Checkouts provides a branded, mobile-friendly checkout for tickets and donations that replaces the Altru web form and writes the transaction back to Altru, with Apple Pay and Google Pay available to guests.
Quick answers
Can one gala ticket be split between a sale and a donation?
Yes, that’s what the benefit value is for. The ticket price is the gift; the benefit value records what the guest received so the deductible portion is calculated correctly.
Should a table sponsorship be one purchase or eight tickets?
Usually one purchase at the sponsor tier, with the guest names collected afterward. It keeps the gift and recognition tied to the sponsor rather than split across eight records.
