A plush otter with a “proceeds support our rescue program” tag. A $50 symbolic animal adoption that comes with a certificate and a photo. An engraved paver on the garden path. None of these is quite a donation and none is quite a purchase, and that’s exactly why they get messy in Altru.
Selling things to raise money works well for museums, zoos, and gardens. The hard part is recording each sale so finance can reconcile it, development can credit the donor, and the donor gets an accurate acknowledgment. This guide covers how to think about fundraising items in Altru, a few common setups, and where you should test before you trust them.
Decide what the money actually is
Before you build anything, sort each offering into one of three buckets. The bucket determines how you record it.
- Pure sale. The guest buys a product at a normal price, and your organization keeps the margin. A gift shop mug sold during a campaign is still just a mug sale, even if the profit supports the campaign. Record it as merchandise or sales revenue, not as a gift.
- Pure gift with a token thank-you. The guest gives $100 and gets a sticker or a certificate with little real value. Record it as a donation. Under IRS rules, low-cost token items generally don’t reduce the deductible amount, but confirm the current thresholds with your finance team.
- Split transaction. The guest pays more than the item is worth, and the difference is a gift. Most adoption packages, pavers, and benefit-dinner tickets fall here. The fair market value portion is revenue for the item, and the rest is a contribution.
The split bucket is where most mistakes happen. If you record the whole amount as a donation, the donor’s receipt overstates what they can deduct. If you record it all as a sale, your fundraising totals come up short and the donor gets no gift credit. For payments over $75 where the donor receives something in return, U.S. charities also need to provide a written disclosure of the goods’ value. Your acknowledgment template should handle that.
Common setups and how to record them
Symbolic adoptions and sponsor-a-something packages
These are usually split transactions. One clean approach is to sell the physical package (plush, certificate, photo) as an item priced at its fair market value, and record the rest as a donation to a designation like “Animal Care” in the same transaction. That keeps both halves visible: the item in sales reporting and the gift on the constituent record with proper credit.
The alternative is a single donation that carries a note about the benefit’s value. It’s quicker at the register, but you’re relying on staff and acknowledgment letters to handle the deductible amount correctly every time.
Pavers, bricks, and named recognition
Recognition with no real market value, like a name on a donor wall, is usually treated as a gift. An engraved brick could be either. Decide your policy with finance and then apply it the same way every time. Pavers also need fulfillment data such as the inscription text and location. Make sure you have a consistent place on the transaction or constituent record to store it, such as a note or an attribute, so someone can query it later when the engraving order goes out.
Add-ons at checkout and in daily sales
Asking for a donation alongside admission, either a set amount or a round-up, is the simplest item-adjacent fundraising you can do. It works best when the donation goes to a specific designation and appeal, so you can report on it separately from walk-up giving. Make sure the donation stays a separate line from the ticket so it’s acknowledged and credited as a gift.
Event benefits
Gala tickets, auction items, and dinner packages follow the same split logic. The event registration covers the value of the dinner, and anything above it is a contribution. Record winning auction bids at their actual value, and treat only the amount paid over that value as a gift.
Test the parts you’re unsure about
How items, fees, designations, and appeals interact varies with how your Altru database is configured. Be careful with these questions in particular:
- Can a merchandise or sale item carry a designation, or only the donation line in the same transaction?
- Does the item revenue post to the GL account your finance team expects once batches are committed?
- Do the split amounts show up correctly in constituent revenue history and in your acknowledgment letters?
- Can you pull item sales and the related gifts into one query for campaign reporting?
Run a few practice transactions in a sandbox or test environment, or with a staff test constituent you reverse afterward, and check them in revenue, batches, and reports before staff go live. If you can’t make a configuration work, ask Blackbaud support whether it’s supported. Don’t build a workaround that finance will undo later.
Make reporting part of the setup
The point of fundraising items is to show what they raised, so build the report before launch. Create an appeal or a set of designations specific to the campaign. Then save a revenue query that pulls both the gift portions and the related item sales by date range. If you track adoptions or pavers on a calendar cycle, add a smart field or a saved query that counts active sponsors, so development doesn’t have to rebuild the number each quarter.
Quick answers
Should front desk staff decide how to split a payment?
No. Set the item price and the donation amount in advance for each package, so staff only pick the package and the split happens the same way every time.
Can merchandise profits count toward a fundraising goal?
They can count toward a campaign’s total raised if your organization reports it that way, but they aren’t gifts. Keep them in a separate line so donor giving totals stay accurate.
