At a museum, zoo, or garden, gifts rarely arrive through one door. Someone adds $10 to a ticket order. A member rounds up a renewal. A board member’s friend gives online after the spring gala. A longtime supporter mails a check in response to the year-end letter. Shopping for “donation software” usually means figuring out how to make all of those moments easier for the giver without creating a second donor database that nobody trusts.
For organizations already running Altru, that last part is the whole decision. Altru holds your constituents, memberships, revenue, and history. Any donation tool you add should feed that record, not compete with it.
Start by listing where gifts actually happen
Before looking at vendors, write down every place a person can give you money today and how it reaches Altru. A typical list looks like this:
- Standalone giving page on your website, often an Altru donation web form.
- Add-on gifts during online ticket or membership purchases.
- At the admissions desk or gift shop, entered through daily sales.
- Event and gala giving: paddle raises, sponsorships, pledges paid later.
- Mail and phone gifts, entered by staff in batches.
- Third-party platforms such as peer-to-peer or giving-day sites, usually imported after the fact.
The weak spots tend to be obvious once they are on paper. Usually it is a giving page that looks nothing like the rest of your site, a checkout that does not ask for a gift at all, or a platform whose data gets retyped into Altru weeks later.
What has to land in Altru, every time
A donation tool that takes money but leaves your development staff cleaning up records is not saving anyone time. Whatever you choose, confirm that each gift arrives in Altru with:
- The right constituent. The gift should match to an existing record when the donor already exists, rather than creating a new one each time. Duplicate records are one of the most persistent long-term costs of a poorly connected giving form.
- Designation and fund. General operating, a capital campaign, animal care, a conservation fund. Finance needs this to be right on the first pass.
- Appeal or source. Without it you cannot tell whether the year-end email outperformed the printed letter.
- Tribute details for honor and memorial gifts, including who should be notified.
- Payment details that reconcile. Deposits from your processor should tie back to revenue in Altru without a spreadsheet in the middle.
- Acknowledgment status, so the thank-you letter or receipt goes out once and only once.
Questions worth asking any vendor
- Does data write directly into Altru, or is it exported and imported on a schedule? Ask who fixes it when an import fails.
- How does it decide whether a donor is new or existing?
- Can a gift be added in the same cart as tickets or a membership, or does the donor go to a separate page?
- Which payment methods are supported? On phones, wallet payments like Apple Pay and Google Pay remove the most typing.
- Can donors choose to cover the processing fee?
- Does the page match your website’s branding, and does it work well on a phone?
- How are recurring gifts handled, and where do they live? Get a specific answer here, not a general “yes.”
Check what Altru already does before buying anything
Altru includes donation web forms, and for some organizations those are enough. They write straight to Altru, they come with the software you already license, and your staff already understand the records they create. Common reasons organizations look further are limited control over design, a checkout experience that feels dated on mobile, and the difficulty of combining a gift with a ticket or membership purchase in one step.
Test your own forms on a phone, as a first-time donor and as an existing member, before deciding. If you are unsure whether a specific feature, such as a particular recurring gift setup or tribute field, is supported natively in your Altru configuration, try it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support. That answer may change what you need from an add-on.
Be cautious about these setups
- A separate fundraising CRM “synced” to Altru. Two donor databases drift apart. Someone ends up deciding which one is right.
- Platforms that only offer CSV exports. Manual imports are workable for a once-a-year giving day. For everyday online giving they turn into a recurring task that slips during busy months.
- Tools priced on a percentage of every gift with no clear explanation of what you get for it. Compare the total cost against flat pricing.
Where Social Good fits
Social Good’s Checkouts replace Altru web forms with a branded, mobile-friendly checkout for donations, tickets, and memberships, with Apple Pay and Google Pay, and the data writes back to Altru. Donors can also be offered the option to cover the card fee at checkout.
Quick answers
Do we need to leave Altru to get better online giving?
No. Many cultural organizations keep Altru for constituent and revenue records and change only the giving experience in front of it.
Is asking for a gift during ticket purchase off-putting?
It depends on how it is presented. A single, optional prompt with a few preset amounts is generally well received. Test it, watch completion rates, and adjust.
