“Who actually came?” sounds like a simple question until someone asks it about a summer camp session, a member preview night, or a lecture series. Altru is very good at telling you who paid. Telling you who participated takes some deliberate setup, and the right setup depends on what kind of event you’re running.
This guide breaks that down: the difference between buyers and participants, which parts of Altru fit which kind of event, and what to do when none of them quite fits.
Start by separating the buyer from the participant
Most participant-tracking problems come from one assumption: that the person on the order is the person who showed up. Often they aren’t.
- A parent buys three spots in a family workshop. The order sits on the parent’s constituent record. The two kids who attended don’t exist in Altru at all.
- A school coordinator books a group visit. You know the school and the headcount, not the students.
- A board member buys a table at the gala and fills it with guests whose names arrive by email two days before.
Before you change anything, decide what you actually need for each event type. Is a headcount enough? Do you need names? Do you need each participant as their own constituent so you can market to them, track repeat attendance, or report on youth served for a grant? Those are three different levels of effort, and most organizations only need the top level for a few programs.
Match the event to the right part of Altru
Ticketed programs and classes
Programs sold through daily sales or advance sales (tours, classes, timed programs) are built around capacity and tickets. You get reliable counts by program and time slot, and the order ties to a purchaser. What you generally do not get out of the box is a named record for each ticket holder. If headcount by session is all you need, this is the cleanest option and you can stop here.
Special events with registrants
For fundraising events, receptions, and anything invitation-driven, Altru’s events area is the better fit. Events there are organized around registrants rather than anonymous tickets, and a registrant can bring guests. That structure is what you want when names matter, when you need to send invitations, or when you want attendance to show up on constituent records later.
How attendance is marked, how guests are recorded when their names aren’t known yet, and what shows up on the guest’s own record can vary with your configuration. Set up a test event in a sandbox (or a clearly labeled test event in production) and walk one registration all the way through, including adding a guest and recording attendance, before you rely on it for a real event.
Group visits
Group sales are built around the group and the organizer. If you need individual participants from a school or camp group, treat that as a separate step: collect a roster from the organizer and decide whether those names belong in Altru at all. For minors in particular, many organizations choose not to create individual constituent records and keep only counts and the organizer’s contact.
Workable ways to capture names you don’t have
When the event type doesn’t capture participants on its own, these are the options admins usually reach for, roughly from lightest to heaviest:
- Notes on the order or the buyer’s record. Fast and good enough for a small workshop where someone just needs a reference list. Hard to query, so don’t use it for anything you’ll report on.
- An attribute on the buyer’s constituent record. Useful for tagging “attended Fall Teen Lab” on the person who registered. Easy to pull into a query, but it describes the household’s buyer, not the child who attended.
- Relationship records. If participants are family members, adding them as related constituents (and to the household) lets you record attendance against the actual person. It is more data entry, so reserve it for programs where repeat participation matters.
- Event registrants and guests. If names truly matter, run the program as an event with registrants instead of a ticketed program. You trade some point-of-sale convenience for real participant records.
Whatever you pick, write it down per event type. Participant data falls apart when one coordinator uses notes, another uses attributes, and a third keeps a spreadsheet.
Recording who showed up, not just who registered
Registration and attendance are different facts. For anything you report to funders or use for follow-up, plan how no-shows get recorded. A few practical habits:
- Print or export the registrant list before the event and mark it at check-in, then update Altru the next business day while memories are fresh.
- Assign one person to own post-event cleanup. Attendance updates that “anyone can do” usually get done by nobody.
- If you scan tickets at the door, confirm whether a scan updates anything on the constituent record or only validates the ticket. If you’re unsure, test it, or ask Blackbaud support how your setup handles it.
Reporting on participants
Once data is landing consistently, build one query per need rather than one giant query:
- Headcount by program and date for operations and capacity planning.
- Named attendees for a specific event for thank-you messages and follow-up.
- Repeat participants across a season, if you’ve recorded attendance on individual records. This is where the up-front work pays off, because it can feed membership offers to people who keep coming back.
Before trusting any of these, spot-check them against a paper sign-in sheet or your door count for one event. If the numbers differ, the gap almost always traces back to guests who were never entered or attendance that was never marked.
Quick answers
Does a ticket purchase create a record for each person on the ticket?
Generally no. The order belongs to the purchaser. If you need each attendee as a person, plan a separate way to capture them.
Should every camp child become a constituent?
Only if you have a real use for that data and a policy for handling information about minors. Counts plus the parent’s record cover most reporting needs.
Can I switch an existing ticketed program to registrant-based tracking mid-season?
It’s usually cleaner to make the change at the start of a new season or session so your reports don’t mix two methods. Test the new setup first.
