A free lecture, a members-only preview night, a family day where admission is free but space is limited. You still want a headcount, names, and email addresses, and you want them in Altru instead of a separate sign-up sheet. The money side is easy, because there isn’t any. The setup is where it gets tricky. Altru is built around selling things, so “free with registration” takes a few deliberate choices.
Below are the realistic ways to set this up, what each one is good at, and the questions to answer before you build anything.
First, decide what kind of free event this is
“RSVP” covers a few different situations, and the right Altru setup depends on which one you have:
- Capacity-limited, timed or scheduled. A free tour at 10:00 and 2:00 with 25 spots each. What matters most here is availability and not overbooking.
- A single gathering where you care about who comes. A donor reception, an exhibit opening, a members’ night. What matters most is the guest list, invitations, and attendance tied to constituent records.
- Free admission that still needs a reservation. A free day where you cap attendance to manage crowds. The reservation works like a ticket, just at $0.
The first and third usually fit best as ticketed programs. The second often fits better with Altru’s event management side. Many organizations use both, depending on the event.
Option 1: A $0 ticket on a scheduled program
This is the most common approach for public free events. You set up the event as a program with scheduled times and capacity, just like a paid tour or class, and give it a price type at zero dollars. Registrations then flow through advance sales the same way paid tickets do. Capacity counts down, the order is tied to a constituent, and you can report on it with your usual sales queries.
What to confirm before you rely on it:
- Whether your web form will complete a $0 order. Some setups still expect a payment step, and how Altru’s online forms handle a zero-total cart isn’t something we’d assume. Test it end to end in a sandbox or with a test constituent before you announce the event. If it doesn’t behave the way you need, ask Blackbaud support how your version handles zero-dollar web orders.
- What information you collect. A free registration is often the first time you hear from this person. Decide whether you need an email, a phone number, a ZIP code, or an answer like “how did you hear about us,” and make sure the form actually captures it.
- How a “ticket” reads to the guest. Confirmation language written for paid admission (“your purchase,” “receipt”) can confuse people who didn’t pay anything. Review the confirmation text for free events.
- Per-order limits. Free spots disappear quickly when one person can reserve 20 of them. Decide on a sensible maximum per order.
Option 2: Event registration tied to constituent records
For invitation-driven events like receptions, cultivation events, or member previews, Altru’s event management area is usually a better fit than ticketing. You can track who was invited, who registered, and who attended, all on constituent records. That attendance history is useful later for development and membership work.
The tradeoff is the public-facing side. Event registration is often handled more by staff, or through a separate online form, and you may have less control over the registrant’s experience than with a ticketed program. If you’re unsure how much of the registration your current Altru setup lets guests complete online, try a test registration in your environment before you send invitations.
Option 3: Free admission with a reservation
For free days or free community hours with capped attendance, treat it as admission. That usually means a $0 price type on your general admission program with a timed capacity. Daily sales and your door process stay the same, so staff don’t need to learn something new. The question is the same as in Option 1: make sure the online flow completes without a payment step, and check that membership or other discount rules don’t do anything unexpected to a zero-dollar ticket.
The parts that are easy to forget
No-shows
Free registrations have much higher no-show rates than paid ones, because nobody loses anything by skipping. Organizations commonly handle this by overbooking a little, opening a standby line at the door, or sending a reminder a day or two ahead that makes it easy to cancel. Whatever you choose, track actual attendance against registrations for a few events so you’re working from your own numbers rather than a guess.
Check-in
If the registration is a ticket, scan or redeem it at the door like any other ticket so attendance lands in Altru. If you’re working from an event guest list, mark attendance on the list. Either way, avoid a paper clipboard that never gets entered. Attendance data is half the reason to register people in Altru at all.
Duplicates
Free events pull in a lot of first-time contacts, and many of them already exist in your database under a slightly different name or an old email. Expect some new duplicate constituent records after a big free event and plan a cleanup pass.
Follow-up
Build a query for everyone who registered, and another for everyone who attended. Those two lists are the basis for a thank-you, a membership offer, or a “sorry we missed you” note. The free event pays off in the follow-up.
Where Social Good fits
If you want registration to happen on your own website in a branded, mobile-friendly flow instead of the standard Altru web forms, Social Good Checkouts replaces those forms for tickets, memberships, and donations, and writes the data back to Altru. For a free event set up as a ticketed program, that keeps registrations, capacity, and constituent records in Altru while giving guests a cleaner sign-up page.
Quick answers
Can I just use a Google Form and enter the names later?
You can, but someone has to do the entry and nobody enforces capacity. That works for a one-off event. For anything recurring, it’s worth setting the event up in Altru.
Should members register differently from the public?
Only if the event is members-only or members get early access. In that case, limit the price type or the sales window to members and test that a non-member can’t get through.
