The reciprocal network you dropped three years ago. The parking pass that went away when the lot was sold. The “two free guest passes” that turned into “one guest pass” during the last price change. Old membership benefits tend to hang around in Altru long after they stop existing in real life, and they cause small, annoying problems: a cashier sees a benefit on a member’s record and honors it, a new staff member picks it from a dropdown, or a report counts something you no longer offer.
Cleaning them up is mostly about one distinction: removing a benefit from what you offer going forward is different from erasing it from history. You almost always want the first, not the second.
Why you usually can’t (and shouldn’t) just delete it
A benefit that was ever attached to a membership level has probably been tied to real member records and transactions. Those records describe what someone actually received when they joined or renewed, and that history matters for audits, fair market value on the tax side, and answering “what did I get last year?” questions.
Depending on your Altru setup, the system may block deletion of a benefit that’s in use, or it may allow it in some places and not others. We’d rather not guess on your behalf. Before you delete anything, try it in your sandbox or test environment if you have one, or ask Blackbaud support how deleting a referenced benefit behaves in your version. If deletion isn’t clean, retiring the benefit is the safer route anyway.
Retire it in the places that drive day-to-day use
Here’s the order we’d work in. Each step removes the benefit from one path where staff or members might still encounter it.
1. Take it off the membership levels
Open each membership program and check every level, including levels you don’t sell anymore but that still have active members. Remove the defunct benefit from the level’s benefit list so new joins and renewals stop picking it up. Do this deliberately: a level that still has active members at the old terms may need to keep the benefit until those memberships expire, or you may decide to honor it for current members only. Make that call before you edit, not after.
2. Retire the benefit itself
If your benefit setup offers an inactive or retired status, use it. If it doesn’t, a common workaround is to rename the benefit with a clear prefix, such as “RETIRED – Reciprocal Network,” so it sorts to the bottom of lists and nobody mistakes it for something current. Put the retirement date in the name or description so the next administrator knows what happened.
3. Check your web forms
Online join and renew forms often describe benefits in their own text, separate from how the levels are configured. Read through every membership web form and remove any mention of the old benefit. The same goes for any membership pages on your website that list what each level includes.
4. Clean up communications
Welcome letters, renewal notices, acknowledgment templates, and membership card text frequently list benefits by hand. Search your marketing and communications templates for the benefit’s name. These are the most common place an old perk keeps getting promised long after it’s gone.
5. Review queries, smart fields, and reports
If any queries or smart fields filter on the benefit, or a report groups by it, update them. Otherwise your benefit counts or fulfillment lists will quietly include a line item you stopped offering. A query of memberships that include the retired benefit is also useful on its own: it tells you exactly which current members still have it on their record.
Decide what current members keep
This is a policy question, not a software one, and it’s worth settling with your membership manager before you touch the system. Most organizations pick one of these:
- Honor through expiration. Members who joined with the benefit keep it until their current term ends. It drops off at renewal. This is the friendliest option and the easiest to explain.
- End it on a fixed date. Useful when the benefit depended on a partner (a reciprocal agreement, a parking arrangement) that simply stopped. Send a short note to affected members so the front desk isn’t the first to tell them.
- Replace it. If something new takes its place, say so in the same message. Members accept a swap much more easily than a removal.
Whichever you choose, give front-line staff a one-line answer for when a member asks. “That benefit ended in June; your membership now includes X” is enough.
Leave a trail
Keep a short internal log: the benefit name, the date it was retired, which levels it was removed from, and the policy for existing members. Altru won’t keep that context for you in one place, and two years from now someone will find the retired benefit on an old record and wonder whether it’s a mistake.
Quick answers
Will removing a benefit from a level change existing memberships?
It shouldn’t rewrite history, but behavior can depend on your configuration and on when the membership next renews. Test with a sample record in a sandbox, or confirm with Blackbaud support, before making the change across all levels.
What about benefits that have a fair market value?
If the retired benefit carried a value that affected the deductible portion of a membership, check with your finance team. Removing it from a level changes what new members receive, which may change what your acknowledgments should say.
