A couple buys a family membership at the front desk. A month later, one of them creates a login on your website to reserve tickets, and the site acts like they’ve never met you. Or the other spouse registers too, and now you have three constituent records where you expected one household. Both problems come from the same place: in Altru, a web login, a constituent, a household, and a membership are four different things, and they only connect where you’ve made them connect.
This guide explains how those pieces relate, where registration usually goes sideways, and what an administrator can do to keep web accounts and households lined up.
Four records that people treat as one
- The web account is a set of login credentials. It is tied to an individual constituent record, not to a household.
- The constituent record is the person: name, address, email, giving and purchase history.
- The household is a group record that links individual constituents who live together. It’s useful for mailings, recognition, and reporting, but it isn’t a login and doesn’t carry its own credentials.
- The membership belongs to a membership program and lists one or more members, each of whom is a constituent. Being in the same household as a member is not the same as being listed on the membership.
When a person registers online, Altru has to decide which constituent record that login belongs to. Everything downstream (whether they see member pricing, whether their purchases land on the right record, whether the household stays clean) depends on that one decision.
Where registration goes wrong
The match misses, and a new record gets created
If the person registers with an email or name spelling that doesn’t match what staff entered at the desk, Altru may not recognize them and can create a new constituent. That new record has no household, no membership, and no history. The member now has two identities in your database, and only one of them knows they’re a member.
The second adult registers separately
Spouses and partners often share one email address at the desk but use their own when registering online. Each login points to a single constituent. If the second adult isn’t already a constituent in the household, or isn’t listed as a member on the membership, their login won’t see what the first person sees.
Household members aren’t listed on the membership
Staff sometimes add a spouse to the household but forget to add them as a member on the membership itself, or the reverse. How your web forms decide member eligibility matters here. Some setups look at the logged-in constituent’s own membership; others may consider household relationships. If you’re not sure which applies to your forms, test it rather than assuming.
How to keep them connected
- Capture a reliable email at the point of sale. Matching on the web side is much better when the desk records each adult’s own email on their own constituent record, not one shared address on the primary member only.
- Add every adult as a named member. If the membership level allows two cardholders, make sure both are on the membership, not just in the household.
- Tell members which email to use. Your welcome email and membership card instructions should say plainly: “Create your online account with the email address you gave us when you joined.” This one sentence prevents a lot of duplicates.
- Test in a sandbox. Create a test household with two adults and a membership. Register each adult online, once with the matching email and once with a different one. Note exactly what happens to the records. That gives you a factual answer for your own configuration, which is worth more than any general description.
- Confirm the details with Blackbaud support. Matching rules and what a web login can see are worth confirming for your version and setup, especially before you change forms or train staff on new procedures.
Finding the records that already slipped
A few queries will show you the size of the problem:
- Constituents created recently with a web login but no household and no membership. Compare them against existing members by email and last name.
- Members whose households include adults who aren’t listed on the membership.
- Constituents sharing an email address with another record, which often signals a duplicate or a shared household email.
Merge duplicates carefully. Decide which record keeps the login, and check that the surviving record ends up in the right household with the membership attached. Note what you merged and why, so the next admin understands what happened.
Giving members a clear view of their account
Most of the friction comes from members not knowing which record they’re logged in as. Social Good’s Membership Portal lets members view their membership status, renew, upgrade, and update their profile online against live Altru data, so a member can see right away whether they’re signed into the record that holds their membership. It doesn’t replace the data hygiene above, but it makes mismatches visible to the member instead of only to your staff.
Quick answers
Does a household have its own web login?
No. Logins belong to individual constituents. A household groups those individuals but isn’t something a person signs in as.
Why can one spouse see member pricing online and the other can’t?
Usually because only one of them is listed on the membership, or the second person’s login is attached to a different (often duplicate) constituent record. Check both.
Can we stop web registration from creating duplicates entirely?
Not reliably. Good email capture at the desk and clear instructions to members reduce duplicates a lot, but plan on a regular duplicate review as part of normal upkeep.
