Your member preview night sold out in two days, and the phone keeps ringing. People want to know if they can get on a list in case someone cancels. Two weeks later, three registrants do cancel, and nobody can say who asked first.
That’s the real problem a waitlist solves: a fair, ordered record of who wants in, and a fast way to offer them the seat when one opens. Here’s how to build that around Altru today, and where the limits are.
Start with the honest part: there’s no waitlist button
As far as we know, Altru doesn’t include a dedicated waitlist feature for special events. You can set capacity on an event and its registration options, and Altru will stop selling when you hit it. What it won’t do on its own is collect names past that point, hold them in order, and automatically offer a released spot to the next person.
Altru changes over time, so confirm this for your own environment. Check the event and registration option settings in a test or sandbox environment, or ask Blackbaud support directly whether anything in your current release handles overflow registrations. If something new has shipped, use it. If not, the approaches below work well.
Option 1: A “waitlist” registration option inside the event
This keeps everything in Altru, which makes reporting and follow-up much easier.
- Add a second registration option to the event and name it clearly, such as “Waitlist (no charge).” Set the price to zero.
- Keep it hidden until the event sells out. Staff can add people to it at the desk or by phone. Whether you expose it on your public web form is a judgment call; many organizations keep it staff-only so guests don’t confuse it with a real ticket.
- Capture the request time. The registration date tells you who asked first. If staff add people in batches at the end of the day, have them add a short note with the actual time of the call so the order stays fair.
- Exclude waitlisted registrants from headcounts. Make sure your attendee lists, name badges, and catering counts filter out the waitlist option. This is the step most often missed.
When a spot opens, contact the next person, take payment, and move them to the paid registration option (or cancel the waitlist registration and create a new paid one, depending on what’s cleanest in your setup). Test that move in your sandbox first so you know exactly what it does to revenue and registration history.
The tradeoff: a $0 registration can inflate “registrant” numbers in some reports. Decide up front how you’ll report on it, and tell whoever pulls event results.
Option 2: An interest list on the constituent record
If you’d rather not touch the event’s registrations at all, track demand on the person instead.
- Create a constituent attribute (or use a constituent interest, if your organization already tracks those) such as “Waitlist: Spring Gala.” Include the date requested.
- Build a query of constituents with that attribute, sorted by date. That query is your waitlist.
- When someone gets a seat, update or remove the attribute so the list stays accurate.
This is cleaner for reporting and works well for events with a long lead time. It takes slightly more discipline, because nothing on the event itself reminds staff the list exists. Put a note on the event record that points to the query.
Option 3: A form outside Altru
Some teams use a simple online form for waitlist sign-ups, then enter people into Altru only when a spot opens. It’s quick to set up and easy for guests. The cost is that you now have two lists, and the outside one won’t know who’s a member, who already registered, or who’s a duplicate. If you go this way, have one person own the list and reconcile it against Altru before every offer.
Decide the rules before you need them
A waitlist goes sideways when staff improvise. Write down a short policy and share it with the desk and the events team:
- Order: strictly first come, first served, or do members get priority?
- Response window: how long does someone have to accept before you move to the next name? Twenty-four to forty-eight hours is common.
- Party size: if a single seat opens and the next person needs four, do you skip ahead to someone who needs one?
- Payment: does the offer go out with a payment deadline, or do you hold the seat until they call back?
- Closing the list: at what point before the event do you stop making offers and tell everyone still waiting?
That last one matters. People remember being left on a list with no word. A short note a few days before the event, thanking them and pointing to the next date or program, turns a disappointment into a reason to come back.
Handling cancellations so the list actually gets used
A waitlist only helps if someone notices when a seat frees up. Assign one person to check cancellations for each sold-out event, and make it part of their routine rather than something they hear about secondhand. If cancellations come in by email or phone, route them to that person. When they process the cancellation in Altru, they work the waitlist right then.
It also helps to know your typical no-show and cancellation rate for similar events. If you know a gala usually loses a handful of guests in the final week, you can tell waitlisted people honestly what their odds are.
Quick answers
Can Altru automatically notify the next person when a spot opens?
Not that we’re aware of. Plan on a staff member making the offer by phone or email. Confirm with Blackbaud support if you want to be sure for your release.
Should waitlisted guests appear on the event’s registrant list?
Only if you’ve set up a way to filter them out of anything used for check-in, catering, or seating. Otherwise, keep them on the constituent record instead.
What if the event is a timed program rather than a registration-style event?
The same thinking applies, but capacity lives on the program’s time slots. The constituent attribute approach usually works better there, since you’re tracking interest in a specific date and time.
