Gift memberships sound simple until December. A grandparent wants to buy a family membership for their grandkids, but they want something to put in a card, they don’t know the household’s email address, and they’d rather the year not start ticking until the family actually visits. Altru handles part of that well and part of it awkwardly. The trick is knowing which kind of gift you’re selling before the transaction goes in.
Two different products hiding under one name
When people say “gift membership,” they usually mean one of two things:
- A gift membership with a known recipient. The buyer tells you who it’s for, you have the recipient’s name and address, and the membership can start now (or close to now).
- A gift certificate for a membership. The buyer pays today, the recipient is vague or unknown, and someone redeems it later, sometimes months later.
Altru’s membership tools are built around the first case. The second case is really a prepaid voucher, and Altru doesn’t have an obvious, purpose-built “unactivated membership” that I’d point you to with confidence. If you need that, confirm with Blackbaud support or test in a sandbox before you promise it to buyers. In the meantime, the workarounds below hold up.
Case 1: The recipient is known
This is the clean path. Altru lets you record a membership where the person paying is not the member, so the revenue sits with the giver and the membership sits with the recipient’s constituent record.
- Look up both people first. Search for the giver and the recipient before creating anyone new. Gift season is a reliable source of duplicate constituent records, especially when the giver types the recipient’s name slightly differently than the recipient did last time.
- Put the membership on the recipient. The recipient’s record should carry the membership level, dates, and card. The giver gets the payment and the acknowledgment.
- Decide where the card goes. Many givers want the card mailed to them so they can wrap it. Others want it sent straight to the recipient. Ask at the point of sale and note it on the transaction, because once the batch of cards prints, nobody will remember.
- Send two different messages. The giver needs a receipt and thank-you. The recipient needs a welcome that says who the gift is from. If both get the standard new-member letter, the giver ends up with a welcome packet for a membership that isn’t theirs.
Before the season starts, run a test gift transaction and print a card from it. Check whose name appears on the card, whose address it mails to, and whose name shows up in the acknowledgment. Those three answers drive most of the complaints you’ll hear in January.
Case 2: The recipient is unknown, or the start date should wait
Here you’re really selling a promise. A few approaches organizations use:
Sell a voucher, redeem it as a membership
Set up a separate sellable item or product for the gift certificate at the price of each membership level. The buyer pays for that item, you hand them a printed certificate with a unique code, and when the recipient comes in or calls, staff process the membership and apply the prepaid value. This keeps the membership dates honest, since the term starts when it’s redeemed, not when the giver paid.
The catch is bookkeeping. You now have money received for something not yet delivered, and you need a way to track which certificates are outstanding. Talk to your finance team about how they want that revenue recorded before you build the item, and keep a simple log (or a query, if you can tie the certificate code to the sale) of issued versus redeemed codes.
Sell the membership now, adjust dates at activation
Some teams process the gift as a regular membership on a placeholder or the giver’s record, then move it and reset the start and expiration dates when the recipient shows up. It works, but it’s manual, it depends on staff remembering to do it, and it can muddy membership history. Use it only if volume is low.
Set a firm policy on start dates
Whichever route you choose, write down when a gift membership starts: on purchase, on a chosen date, or on first visit. Put that rule on the certificate itself. Most disputes come from a recipient who assumed they had twelve months from the day they opened the envelope.
Making the certificate itself
Altru is not a design tool, so most organizations produce the physical certificate outside it. A common setup:
- Build a query of gift transactions (giver, recipient if known, level, certificate code, purchase date).
- Export it and mail-merge into a designed template in Word or your design software.
- Print on good stock, or send a PDF to the giver for online purchases.
Include the level, what it covers, how to redeem or activate it, the start-date rule, and a phone number or email for questions. Leave the dollar amount off unless you have a reason to show it; recipients rarely need it.
Things to sort out before you launch
- Expiration of unredeemed certificates. Check your state’s rules on gift certificates before you print an expiration date. Some states restrict them.
- Refunds and exchanges. Decide what happens if the recipient already has a membership. Extending their current term is the friendliest answer.
- Online sales. If you want gift memberships sold on your website, confirm your Altru web forms can collect separate giver and recipient information. Test it end to end, including the emails both people receive.
- Front desk training. Give desk staff a one-page sheet on how to redeem a certificate. A recipient standing at the counter with a card in hand is not the moment to work it out.
Quick answers
Can the giver and the member be different people in Altru?
Yes. That’s the standard gift membership setup: payment on the giver, membership on the recipient. Test it once so you know how your cards and letters handle it.
Does Altru have built-in gift certificates for memberships?
Not in a form I’d count on for deferred activation. Ask Blackbaud support what your version supports, and plan on a voucher-style workaround if the answer is no.
