A local bank writes a $5,000 check and wants “a corporate membership.” What did it buy? Free admission for employees? A logo on the donor wall? Twenty guest passes a year? A members-only evening? Before anyone touches Altru, that question needs a written answer. Otherwise the software setup copies the confusion.
This guide covers the decisions to make first, the setup choices in Altru, and the details that cause trouble later: employee admission, tax receipts, and renewals.
Step one: define the program on paper
Corporate programs fail in the database when they were never really designed. Answer these before you build anything:
- Who is the member? The company, not the person who signed the check. Your contact at the company will change. The membership should stay with the organization.
- How many levels, and what does each one include? Keep it to three or four. List the benefits in concrete terms: number of employee admissions, guest passes, event invitations, recognition, and any rental or program discounts.
- How do employees prove they belong? This one decision drives most of your front-desk workload (more on it below).
- What is the fair market value of the benefits? Your finance team needs it to split the payment between the membership benefit and the deductible gift.
- What is the term? Most corporate programs run on an anniversary year. Some line up with the company’s fiscal year or your own, which makes budgeting easier for the company but can complicate renewals.
Setting it up in Altru
Use a separate membership program
Build corporate memberships as their own membership program, with its own levels, instead of adding “Corporate” levels to your household program. A separate program keeps reporting clean: you can see corporate revenue, renewals, and lapses without filtering household members out every time. It also lets you set terms, pricing, and renewal rules that suit businesses without touching the family memberships your desk sells every day.
Put the membership on the organization record
Altru handles both individual and organization constituents. Ideally the membership belongs to the organization constituent, with your main contact linked to it through a relationship. Whether your configuration lets an organization be the primary member, and how member cards are issued in that case, can depend on how your programs are set up. Test it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before you launch, not after you’ve sold twenty of them. If organization-held memberships don’t behave the way you need, a common fallback is to make the primary contact the named member and record the company relationship clearly, but be aware that the contact may leave the company.
Record the benefit value
Set up the levels so that the membership portion and the contribution portion are both recorded the way your finance team expects. Confirm how your acknowledgment letters will show the deductible amount. Getting this right from the first sale is much easier than correcting a year of receipts.
Employee admission: pick one method
This is where corporate programs most often go wrong. The common options, each with trade-offs:
- Shared company cards. The company gets a set number of member cards that any employee can borrow. This is easy to administer, and it naturally limits usage. The downside is that cards get lost in a drawer and nobody visits, which hurts renewals.
- Show your work ID. Employees show a company badge at the desk. This is the simplest option for the company, but your staff have to know which companies are current, and you need a way to record the visit, usually as a comp or discounted ticket tied to the company.
- Discount or promo codes for online booking. The company receives a code for its employees. This works well with timed ticketing and gives you clean usage data. Codes can get shared outside the company, so set an expiration and rotate them at renewal.
- Vouchers or guest passes. A fixed number of passes per year. You know exactly what was used, but you have to track redemption.
Whatever you pick, make sure each employee visit is recorded somewhere you can report on. At renewal time, “your employees made 140 visits this year” is your strongest argument.
Keep a current-member list at the desk
Front-desk staff need to know which companies are active and at which level. Build a query of active corporate memberships with company name, level, expiration date, and admission benefit, and keep it where staff can see it. Review it monthly so expired companies drop off.
Renewals are a sales conversation
Corporate renewals rarely happen from a form letter alone. Plan for:
- A reminder to the primary contact 60 to 90 days out, since companies often need purchase approval or an invoice.
- A usage summary: visits, events attended, and recognition delivered.
- A check that the contact still works there. Bounced emails are a common sign the relationship has moved on.
If you invoice companies instead of collecting payment up front, decide how open balances are recorded in Altru (for example, as pledges, if your organization already uses them) so the membership isn’t marked active until finance is satisfied.
Quick answers
Should corporate memberships be in the same program as household memberships?
Usually not. A separate program keeps reporting, pricing, and renewal rules independent.
Is a corporate membership a donation or a purchase?
Often both. The value of the benefits is the purchase portion and the rest may be deductible. Have your finance team set the benefit values and confirm how acknowledgments present them.
What if our contact leaves the company?
If the membership lives on the organization record, update the relationship to the new contact and nothing else changes. That’s the main reason to tie it to the company in the first place.
