A school district wants to pay a $4,800 field trip invoice from its checking account. A family foundation asks for “your ACH details” for a pledge payment. A corporate member’s accounts payable team refuses to put a card on file. Sooner or later, someone asks whether your Altru web forms can take a bank account payment instead of a card.
The short answer: Altru’s online forms are built around card payments processed through Blackbaud Merchant Services. Self-service bank account (ACH) payment on a public web form isn’t something we’d count on being available out of the box, and the details can vary with your merchant setup and Blackbaud’s current releases. Before you promise it to anyone, confirm with Blackbaud support or test in a sandbox. Assuming the answer is “not online,” here is how organizations handle these payments without leaving Altru out of the loop.
First, figure out why people are asking
“Can we take ACH?” usually comes from one of three places, and each has a different fix:
- Large institutional payments. Schools, companies, and government agencies often pay by ACH or check as a matter of policy. They aren’t paying through your website anyway. They want an invoice and remittance instructions.
- Processing cost. Finance notices that card fees on big gifts and group bookings add up, and bank transfers are usually cheaper. That’s a cost problem, and there are other ways to address it.
- Donor preference. Some donors simply don’t like putting large gifts on a card. They’re often happy to mail a check or send a transfer if you make the instructions easy to find.
Ask finance and the development office which of these is actually driving the request. It’s rarely all three.
Option 1: Accept the transfer outside Altru, record it inside
This is what most organizations end up doing for group sales, pledges, and sponsorships.
- Get receiving instructions from your bank. Your finance team decides what’s shared (often a remittance sheet on letterhead) and who’s allowed to send it. Never put account numbers in a public web page.
- Send it with the invoice or pledge reminder, along with a reference the payer should include, such as the group sales order or the constituent’s name.
- Watch the bank deposit, then enter the payment in Altru against the right order, pledge, or membership, using whatever payment method your finance team has agreed on for electronic transfers.
- Batch and reconcile it the same way you handle checks, so your Altru revenue matches the bank statement.
The weak spot is the gap between “money arrived” and “someone entered it.” Name one person who owns that step and reviews deposits on a set schedule. Otherwise a group shows up for its visit with an order that still looks unpaid.
Option 2: Collect bank details for recurring gifts
Some organizations set up recurring gifts drawn from a donor’s bank account, collected on a signed authorization form rather than online. Whether Altru can process that directly depends on your merchant account and configuration, so check with Blackbaud before building a process around it.
Whatever you do, handle bank details carefully. Don’t accept account numbers by email, don’t type them into constituent notes, and keep the signed authorization somewhere finance controls. A debit pulled without proper authorization becomes a real problem when a donor disputes it.
Option 3: Reduce the card cost instead
If the real complaint is fees, you may not need ACH at all. Common approaches:
- Offer donors and buyers the option to cover the processing fee at checkout.
- Steer very large gifts and group payments to check or transfer with an “Other ways to pay” note on your giving and group sales pages.
- Review your merchant rates with Blackbaud. Fees on high-dollar transactions are worth a conversation.
Things that catch teams off guard
Bank transfers can fail after the fact
An ACH payment can be returned days later for insufficient funds or a closed account. If you release tickets or activate a membership the moment a transfer is initiated, decide what happens when one bounces. For group visits, many organizations simply wait until the deposit clears.
Payment method reporting
If electronic transfers get recorded as “check” by some staff and “other” by others, your payment method reports stop meaning anything. Pick one convention and write it down.
Acknowledgments
Gifts entered by hand still need receipts. Make sure manually entered transfers end up in the same acknowledgment process as web gifts, so a donor who sent $10,000 by transfer isn’t the one who never gets a thank-you letter.
Where Social Good fits
We don’t add bank account payments to Altru. For the card side of things, Social Good Checkouts replaces Altru web forms with a branded, mobile-friendly checkout that supports Apple Pay and Google Pay, offers an optional cover-the-fee choice for guests and donors, and writes the transactions back to Altru. For organizations whose ACH question is really about cost, the fee option is often the more useful fix.
Quick answers
Can a member renew online with a checking account?
Plan on cards for online renewals unless Blackbaud confirms otherwise for your account. Members who want to pay by bank can renew by check or transfer, and staff can record it in Altru.
How should we record an ACH payment in Altru?
Enter it against the original order, pledge, or membership once the deposit shows up, using a payment method your finance team agrees on, and include it in your normal batch and reconciliation.
