“How many new members did we get last month?” sounds like a one-click question. In Altru it usually isn’t, because the answer depends on what your organization means by “new,” and there may not be a standard report that matches your definition. What does work reliably is a membership query you build once, check against a few known records, and reuse every month.
This guide covers how to define a first-time member, how to build the query, and how to check the numbers before they go into a board packet.
Start by agreeing on what “first-time” means
Before you open the query tool, settle the definition with whoever will read the report. These three groups often get lumped together:
- True first-time members: people who have never held a membership with you before.
- Rejoins: former members who lapsed and came back. Many organizations count them as “new” for revenue purposes but not for acquisition reporting.
- Upgrades or gift recipients: someone who received a gift membership this year and is now paying for their own may or may not count, depending on who you ask.
Marketing usually wants true first-timers, because that measures acquisition. Finance may want everything that wasn’t a renewal. Pick one definition per report and label it clearly. A report titled “First-time members (never held a prior membership)” saves a lot of back-and-forth later.
Check for a standard report first
Look through the membership reports available in your Altru database before you build anything. Depending on your version and configuration, you may find a report that breaks out joins, renewals and rejoins for a date range. If one exists, compare its definition of “join” to the one you agreed on. If you can’t tell how it counts rejoins, run it for a short period and spot-check the names, or ask Blackbaud support how that report classifies a lapsed member who comes back.
If no standard report fits, a query is the better route anyway. You control the logic, and you can export it, schedule it or use it as a selection for mailings.
Build the query
The general approach is the same regardless of field names in your database.
- Start from memberships, not constituents. A membership-based query gives you access to the transaction type (join, renew, rejoin and so on) and the dates for each membership term.
- Filter to the period you care about. Use the transaction or start date of the membership term, for example everything that started last month.
- Filter to join-type transactions. This removes renewals. If your definition excludes rejoins, leave those out here too.
- Exclude anyone with an earlier membership. This step is what separates “first-time” from “joined this month.” A join transaction alone isn’t enough, because a member who lapsed for several years may have been processed as a new join rather than a rejoin. Create a second query or selection of constituents who held any membership before your start date, then exclude that selection from your main query.
- Add useful output fields: constituent name, lookup ID, membership program and level, join date, sales channel (web, front desk, phone), and email. The channel column is often the most useful part of the report.
Save it with a clear name and description so the next person who finds it knows exactly what it counts.
If your database has a “member since” value
Some organizations keep a member-since date on the constituent record, either as a smart field or a custom attribute. If yours is maintained consistently, filtering for a member-since date inside your period is a simpler way to find first-timers. Confirm it’s reliable first. Records converted from an older system, or memberships entered by hand, sometimes have that date blank or set to the conversion date.
Check the numbers before you share them
First-time member counts tend to come out too high, rarely too low. Before you circulate the report:
- Spot-check five or ten names. Open each constituent record and look at the membership history. You’re looking for anyone who clearly held a membership before.
- Look for duplicates. A returning member who bought online with a new email address may have created a second constituent record. That record has no history, so the query counts them as brand new. If several names look familiar, search for similar records before trusting the total.
- Watch households. If a spouse already held a membership in the same household and the other partner now joins under their own record, decide whether that counts as a new member. Your policy matters more than the software here.
- Compare with revenue. The join count should line up roughly with membership revenue coded as new for the same period. A big mismatch usually means one of the date filters is pointing at a different date than you think.
Make it a monthly habit
Once the query holds up, run it on the same day each month and keep a simple running tally by month and channel. After a few months you’ll see which channels bring in first-time members and how many of them renew a year later. That second number, first-year retention, is often more useful than the join count itself. You can measure it by rerunning the query for a period a year back and checking how many of those members have a current renewal.
The list is also a natural audience for a welcome sequence. New members who hear from you in their first few weeks are easier to keep than ones who only hear from you at renewal time.
Getting the list out of Altru automatically
Everything above works inside Altru with exports. If you’d rather not export the list every month, Data Bridge can sync a saved Altru query to Google Sheets, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign and other tools. The first-time member list then stays current in a shared sheet for leadership, or feeds a welcome email audience directly, while Altru remains the source of the data.
Quick answers
Should rejoins count as first-time members?
For acquisition reporting, usually not. Report them as a separate line so you can see win-back results on their own.
Why does my count jump after a big online sale?
Online purchases are where duplicate records tend to come from. Review that month’s list for returning members who show up as new constituents.
