Altru has a small user base compared with the big fundraising platforms, and it’s spread across very different places: a regional history museum, a botanical garden, a mid-sized zoo, a science center. That makes peers harder to find, but it also makes them unusually useful. Someone who runs memberships or timed admission in Altru at an organization your size has probably already hit the problem you’re stuck on.
Below are the places that tend to work, roughly in order of effort, plus a few ideas for turning a single contact into a real peer network.
Start with the Blackbaud Community
Blackbaud runs an online community for its customers, and Altru has its own area there. It’s the closest thing to an official user forum: admins post questions about memberships, sales, queries, and reporting, and other admins answer. Search older threads before posting. A lot of common questions have already been worked through.
Two habits make the community far more useful:
- Say who you are in the post. “Mid-sized art museum, about 4,000 member households, one part-time Altru admin” gets better answers than a bare question, because the people who reply can tell whether their setup looks like yours.
- Look at who answers. The same names come up again and again. Those are the experienced admins, and most are happy to take a direct message or a short call.
If you’re asking about something regional, like users in the Pacific Northwest or another part of the country, post that directly. A thread titled “Any Altru users in Oregon or Washington?” is a perfectly normal post, and it’s how a lot of informal regional groups get started.
Ask Blackbaud to connect you
Your Blackbaud account contact or customer success team knows which organizations use Altru, and that’s information you can’t easily get anywhere else. They can’t hand out a customer list, but it’s reasonable to ask whether there’s an active user group in your region or whether they can introduce you to a customer with a similar profile. Be specific: type of organization, budget size, which parts of Altru you rely on most. Whether they can help depends on the moment, but asking costs nothing.
Blackbaud’s annual customer conference is worth checking too. Look through the agenda for Altru or arts-and-cultural sessions, and if you can’t travel, see whether any sessions are offered virtually or recorded. Note which organizations presented; presenters generally expect follow-up emails.
Use your field associations, not just Blackbaud
Your most likely peers already go to the same conferences you do. State and regional museum associations, the American Alliance of Museums, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the American Public Gardens Association, and the American Association for State and Local History all bring together the exact kinds of organizations that use Altru.
Their listservs, Slack or forum spaces, and conference sessions on ticketing, membership, or data are good places to ask, “Who here is on Altru?” You’ll often find more candid conversation there than on a vendor forum, especially if you’re weighing workarounds or comparing tools.
Find users by looking at the evidence
Organizations don’t usually announce what ticketing and CRM system they use, but it shows up in a few places:
- Job postings. Database, membership, and visitor services roles often list “experience with Blackbaud Altru.” Search job boards and museum association career pages for “Altru.” It’s a quick way to build a list of organizations that use it right now.
- LinkedIn. Search for “Altru” in people’s profiles and filter by location or industry. Database managers and membership managers frequently name the system they run.
- Peers you already know. Ask your counterparts at nearby institutions what they use. Even if they’re not on Altru, they often know who is.
When you reach out cold, keep it short and concrete: who you are, that you’re also an Altru shop, and one specific question. “How do you handle household memberships with two adults at different addresses?” gets a reply far more often than “Would you like to connect?”
Start a small group yourself
If there isn’t a regional user group near you, it doesn’t take much to start one. Three or four organizations meeting quarterly on a video call is enough. Some things that help it last:
- Give each meeting one topic. Membership renewals, end-of-year reporting, timed ticketing setup, duplicate records. A focused agenda keeps people coming back.
- Rotate who shows their screen. Seeing another organization’s membership program setup or a query they use every week teaches more than any description.
- Keep a shared doc. Record what each organization tried and how it went. After a year, you’ll have a reference that’s more practical than most documentation.
- Invite the right people. Include the person who actually runs Altru day to day, not just the director who signed the contract.
Finding peers who look like you
“Similar” matters more than “nearby.” A medium-sized museum gets more from talking to another medium-sized museum three states away than from a large zoo down the road, because staffing, volume, and budget shape how you use Altru as much as the software does. When you search or post, lead with the details that define your setup: annual attendance range, membership size, whether you sell timed tickets, how many people touch Altru, and whether you have a dedicated database person. That’s what lets the right peers recognize themselves.
Video
This short video covers related ground and pairs well with the suggestions above.
Quick answers
Is there an official list of Altru user groups?
Not one we can point you to with confidence. Check the Altru area of the Blackbaud Community and ask your Blackbaud contact what’s currently active in your region, since groups come and go.
Is it okay to contact another organization out of the blue?
Yes. Altru admins are usually a small team or a single person, and most welcome a peer who understands their work. A short, specific message is the best way in.
