Two memberships for the same household is one of the more annoying cleanups in Altru. One spouse buys a family membership at the front desk in May, the other renews online in June under a slightly different email, and now you have two active memberships, two cards, two renewal notices, and a member who is understandably confused about which one is “real.”
The short version: Altru doesn’t give you a simple “combine these two memberships into one” action that you can rely on. What you actually do is decide which membership survives, move the value of the other one onto it, and retire the extra. How you do that depends on why the duplicate exists in the first place.
First, figure out which kind of duplicate you have
“Merge two memberships” usually means one of three different situations, and each one has a different fix.
1. Two constituent records, one person
The member exists twice in Altru (different email, typo in the name, old address), and each record holds its own membership. Here the real problem is the duplicate constituent, not the membership. Altru has constituent merge functionality for exactly this. Merge the constituents first, then look at what happened to the memberships, because merging people does not necessarily mean the two memberships collapse into one. Expect to still have two membership records attached to a single constituent afterward, and plan to clean that up as a second step.
2. Two people in the same household, each with a membership
Both records are legitimate people, but they bought separately when they meant to share one household membership. You don’t want to merge the constituents here. You want one membership with both of them on it as members, and the other membership retired.
3. One constituent, two overlapping memberships
A staff member processed a new “join” instead of a renewal, or someone renewed twice. One person, two memberships running at the same time. This is the most common case and the easiest to fix.
Pick the surviving membership
Before changing anything, decide which record stays. A few rules that keep history intact:
- Keep the one with the longest history. If one membership has years of renewals behind it, that “member since” date matters for recognition, benefits tied to tenure, and your retention reporting. Don’t sacrifice it to keep the newer record.
- Keep the higher level if the levels differ, unless the member tells you otherwise. If they paid for a family level on one and an individual level on the other, ask them what they actually wanted before you guess.
- Check where the payments landed. Look at the revenue on both memberships. You need to know what was paid, when, and through which channel before you decide whether this ends in a refund, a term extension, or an upgrade.
Moving the value onto one membership
Once you’ve chosen the survivor, you have to account for the money on the duplicate. Typical options:
- Refund the duplicate payment and cancel that membership. Cleanest for your books and easiest to explain to the member. Coordinate with whoever handles refunds and batches so the revenue reversal is recorded properly.
- Extend the surviving membership’s term to reflect the extra payment, then cancel the duplicate. Members often prefer this (“just give me the extra year”). Make sure your finance team is comfortable with how that revenue sits, because the payment stays on a membership that no longer exists as active.
- Upgrade the surviving membership if the two payments together roughly equal a higher level, and add the second person as a member on it. This fits the household case well.
Whichever route you take, add a note on the constituent record explaining what you did and why. The next person who sees a canceled membership with a payment on it will otherwise assume something went wrong.
On the specific mechanics, such as whether revenue can be reapplied from one membership to another, or how a canceled membership reports in your membership counts, I’d test in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before doing it on live records. Behavior can depend on your configuration and how the original transaction was processed, and revenue corrections are much harder to undo than they are to do.
Don’t forget the downstream pieces
- Cards and barcodes. The member may be carrying a card for the membership you just canceled. Reissue a card for the survivor and tell them which one to use.
- Renewal mailings and emails. If renewal lists are pulled by query, confirm the canceled membership drops out so they don’t get a reminder for it.
- Exported lists. Anything you’ve already pushed to an email platform or spreadsheet may still have both. Re-pull it.
- Reports. Your active member count was inflated by one for every duplicate. If you find many, let whoever reports membership numbers know before the next board report.
Find the rest before members find them for you
One duplicate usually means there are more. A membership query that returns constituents (or households) with more than one active membership is worth building and saving. Run it monthly. Separately, look for likely duplicate constituents by matching on email, last name plus address, or phone, since that’s where scenario 1 starts.
Then look at where the duplicates came from. Common sources:
- Desk staff choosing “join” when they should search for an existing member and renew.
- Online purchases where the buyer used a different email than the one on file, so a new constituent was created.
- Household members each buying separately because nothing told them a household membership already existed.
A short desk script (“search by last name and zip before every new join”) and a clear line on your website about household memberships will prevent more duplicates than any amount of cleanup.
Quick answers
Does merging two constituents merge their memberships?
Don’t count on it. Plan for both memberships to survive under the merged constituent, and clean them up afterward. Test a merge in a sandbox if you need to know exactly how your setup behaves.
Should I just delete the duplicate membership?
Only if it has no revenue attached and was entered in error. If money was paid, cancel or adjust it with the payment handled properly instead of deleting, so your financial history stays accurate.
