“Join before December 31 and get 13 months for the price of 12.” It’s one of the easiest membership offers to market and one of the more awkward ones to run in Altru. A price discount is simple to set up. Adding time to a term is a different thing, and Altru doesn’t treat the two the same way.
This guide covers what usually works, where the friction is, and how to pick an approach before the campaign launches rather than after a few hundred memberships have gone through with the wrong dates.
The core issue: promotions change price, not term length
Altru’s membership discounts and promotions are designed around reducing what the member pays: a dollar or percentage off, sometimes tied to a code. As far as we know, there’s no standard promotion setting that says “add one month to the expiration date.” The term length comes from the membership level and program setup, not from the discount.
We’d rather not overstate this. Altru gets updated, and configurations vary. Before you plan around it, test in your sandbox: create a test promotion, process a join and a renewal with it, and look at the resulting expiration date. If you don’t have a sandbox, ask Blackbaud support directly whether a promotion can extend a term in your version. Their answer decides which of the options below you need.
Three ways to run an extra-month offer
1. Process normally, then extend the dates afterward
This is the most common approach and the least disruptive to your membership setup.
- Give the campaign something you can find later: a specific promotion or discount (even a $0 one, if your setup allows it), a source code, or an appeal on the revenue.
- Let joins and renewals process at the standard 12-month term.
- Build a membership query that pulls every transaction carrying that marker during the campaign dates.
- Extend each expiration date by one month, with a note on the membership explaining why.
The trade-off is labor. For a few dozen memberships, editing records by hand is fine. For hundreds, find out first whether you have a way to update expiration dates in bulk. That depends on your Altru setup and any tools your organization has, so check with Blackbaud support before you promise anyone a date. Also plan when you’ll make the changes: weekly during the campaign is easier than one big cleanup at the end, and it means members who check their status see the right date sooner.
2. Create a temporary level or term for the campaign
If your membership program lets you define a term in months, a campaign-only option (for example, a 13-month version of each level) builds the extra time into the transaction itself. Nothing needs fixing afterward, and this is the closest thing to an extension that applies automatically.
The downsides are real, though:
- Clutter. Every level you offer needs a matching campaign version, and staff have to pick the right one.
- Reporting. Retention and level reports may now split members across two versions of the same tier. Check how your existing reports and smart fields group levels before you add new ones.
- Renewals. Confirm what a member renews into next year. You want them back on the standard 12-month level, not quietly renewing into a campaign term you’ve since retired.
- Web forms. If you sell memberships online, your web form needs to offer the campaign versions during the promotion and drop them afterward.
Test all four in a sandbox. If any of them break, option 1 is usually safer.
3. Change the start date instead of the end date
Some organizations reframe the offer: “Join in December, and your membership starts January 1.” The member still gets the extra weeks, but you handle it by setting the start date rather than extending the expiration. Whether this is practical depends on how your program handles future-dated memberships and whether front-desk and online purchases can both do it. It works best for gift memberships and year-end campaigns, where a delayed start makes sense to the buyer anyway.
Promo codes for extensions
If you want a code (for example, one that only lapsed members receive by email), think of the code as a tracking key, not the thing that grants the month. Set it up as a promotion your staff and web form will accept, let it carry whatever discount you choose (possibly none), and then use option 1 to extend every membership that used it. Your query becomes the list of memberships to fix.
Before launch, confirm two things in a test transaction: that the code actually appears on the revenue or membership record where a query can find it, and that it works on whatever channel the campaign uses, whether that’s online, at the desk, or both.
Before you announce the offer
- Decide who qualifies. New joins only? Renewals too? Lapsed members? Early renewers who already have time left? Write it down so staff don’t make it up member by member.
- Check your confirmation emails and cards. If the receipt or card shows the standard 12-month date and you extend it a week later, members will call. Either extend before the confirmation goes out, or say in the confirmation that the bonus month will be added shortly.
- Set an end date for the cleanup. Pick a day by which every eligible membership has been extended, and run the query again afterward to catch anything you missed.
- Keep a record. Save the query, the date range, and the count of memberships extended. Next year’s team will want to know how it was done.
Quick answers
Can Altru automatically add a free month when a promo code is used?
Not that we’re aware of through standard promotions, which change price rather than term length. Confirm in a sandbox or with Blackbaud support. A campaign-specific level or term is the closest automatic option.
Will extending an expiration date by hand affect next year’s renewal?
The renewal will be based on the new expiration date, which is what you want. Run a test renewal on an edited membership in your sandbox to confirm.
Is a discount simpler than a free month?
Operationally, yes. If the extra month is mainly a marketing hook, a modest discount on the standard term can do much the same job with no cleanup afterward.
