Your champion’s kit
You love it. Now let’s get it approved.
You’ve seen what it can do.
Now comes the next step: getting a yes from someone who hasn’t.
You sit with Altru every day. You already know a better checkout sells more memberships, that self-service saves your team hours, that a clunky donation form quietly costs you gifts. But the budget doesn’t sit with you — it sits with an Executive Director, a CFO, or a board that’s heard a lot of pitches.
This page exists to put the right words in your hands, so the conversation goes the way it should.
The good news: you’re not asking them to gamble on new software. You’re asking them to make the Altru they already pay for finally perform.
The reframe
Plant this one sentence first
Everything else gets easier once that lands. You keep Altru. Nothing migrates. Blackbaud stays exactly as it is — Social Good is a vetted, approved Blackbaud Technology Partner that works on top of Altru, not in place of it. No new database. No second source of truth. No “rip and replace.”
You’re not adding to the tech stack. You’re fixing the one part of it your guests actually touch — and that part matters more than any back-office feature, because it is the front door to your entire revenue pipeline.
Here’s the pipeline leadership should be picturing: a guest has a smooth, on-brand experience → so they come back → a returning guest becomes a member → and members are the people who give. That isn’t a feel-good story; it’s where the money is. And every rung up that ladder is worth dramatically more than the one below it:
- Research from IMPACTS Experience — a decade of data across 18 museums, zoos, aquariums, and gardens — found the average member is worth about 4x more per year than a one-time visitor, and roughly 4.5x more over the long run (about $727 in lifetime value versus $160 for a visitor).
- Members don’t just renew — they give. In that same research, the average member made $22.18 in additional donations on top of dues, versus just $1.80 from a non-member. Your members are your donor pipeline.
So a clunky checkout isn’t a technical annoyance — it’s a leak at the very top of that pipeline. Every guest lost to a confusing form or an abandoned cart is a membership you won’t sell and a donor you’ll never get the chance to cultivate. Improving the guest experience doesn’t just lift today’s transaction; it feeds the membership base and the giving your mission actually runs on.
And that matters more than ever: the American Alliance of Museums reports that more than half of museums are seeing lower attendance than in 2019, with many also losing grant funding. When every single visitor is harder to win, you cannot afford to lose the ones you have at the checkout.
Sources: Member vs. visitor value — IMPACTS Experience / Colleen Dilenschneider. Attendance & funding context — American Alliance of Museums, 2025 National Snapshot.
Which plan are you trying to get approved?
Know what you’re asking for before you walk in
It changes the money conversation entirely. Pick the line that sounds like you:
Growth — transaction-only
A nominal one-time setup investment, then a flat 3% platform fee on online sales — and you can pass that 3% to guests at checkout, so your ongoing cost can be next to nothing. No annual license fee.
Why it’s your best fit
- The lightest possible commitment. A modest one-time setup investment, no annual license fee, and an ongoing 3% fee that guests can cover at checkout — so day to day it can cost your organization almost nothing. That makes it the easiest “yes” a decision-maker can give.
- You get the entire platform, not a stripped trial. Growth includes the full toolkit — checkouts, digital tickets and membership cards, the email and ticket designers, Link2Pay, the Member Portal, and conversion tracking. Your team sees the complete value from day one.
- Cost only rises when revenue does. You pay the 3% only on sales you actually make, so there’s no fixed commitment to defend at budget time. Paired with the 90-day risk-free trial, there’s effectively nothing to lose.
Whenever budget is the sticking point — or you simply want every tool working first — this is the recommended starting point, with Professional as the step-up later. And if the upfront investment is itself the obstacle, raise it directly on a call with our team.
Standard — $10,177/yr
Reflects the 15% annual-prepay discount; $5,370 one-time setup. A flat annual license with no per-transaction fee.
Why it’s your best fit
- One fixed, forecastable number. A flat annual license is simple to budget and defend — no percentage that climbs as your sales climb, nothing variable for a CFO to model.
- No fee ever shown to your guests. If leadership is philosophically against putting any surcharge in front of visitors or donors, Standard removes the question entirely — you carry a flat license instead of a per-transaction fee.
- It gets more economical as you scale. Once your online sales are high enough that 3% would top the flat fee (roughly $340K in annual online sales), the fixed license becomes the cheaper structure — and you get 3 ticket scanners for busier gates.
Honest note to carry with you: Standard is deliberately lean — it does not include the Member Portal, conversion tracking, or business intelligence. If you want those, Growth (where guests can cover the ongoing fee, so your cost stays next to nothing) or Professional is the better home.
Professional — $20,377/yr Most popular
Reflects the 15% annual-prepay discount; $8,450 one-time setup. The complete platform on a flat annual license.
Why it’s your best fit
- Nothing is held back. Everything in Growth, plus business intelligence, a staging database, and priority chat support — the full analytics-and-reporting layer that lets you actually prove ROI across ticketing, membership, and donations.
- Predictable cost without the compromises. Like Standard, it’s one flat annual number with no per-transaction fee — but unlike Standard, you keep every feature. For a higher-volume organization, a flat fee also beats paying 3%.
- Built for scale and complexity. Up to 5 ticket scanners, a staging database to test changes safely before they go live, and hands-on support — the right fit for larger or multi-venue operations.
Most popular because it’s the no-tradeoff option: full toolkit, full support, one predictable price.
Objections you might hear
…and exactly what to say back
What they mean: “This is an unplanned cost I didn’t budget for.”
First, match the plan to the worry (see above). If budget is the real wall, Growth is the lowest-cost way in: a nominal one-time setup investment, no annual license fee, and a 3% platform fee that guests can cover at checkout — so the ongoing cost to your organization can be next to nothing. (The flat-fee plans carry a larger one-time setup — $5,370 for Standard, $8,450 for Professional — plus a fixed annual license.)
And the guest-covered piece isn’t theoretical. One organization turned on guest-paid fee coverage last October, and from October to June guests voluntarily covered over $10,000 in fees — costs that would otherwise have come straight out of program budgets.
So the question for leadership isn’t “can we afford a big new system,” it’s “does a modest upfront investment pay for itself?” — and a better-converting checkout typically recovers far more than it costs.
What they mean: “Charging our visitors or donors extra feels off-brand — even a little.”
Three things shrink this worry fast. It’s optional and transparent — the guest sees the small fee and chooses whether to cover it; nothing is hidden or forced. It’s tiny next to what your guests already pay everywhere else online — commercial ticketing platforms routinely add service fees averaging 10–30% of the ticket price (on concert tickets the service-fee share has run around 21%), often plus another $5–20 flat charge per ticket. A transparent 3% is a fraction of what your visitors are used to. And guests genuinely opt in — the organization above saw supporters voluntarily cover $10,000+, because people who care about your mission would rather the fee land on them than on your programs.
If leadership would still rather not show guests any fee at all, that’s a plan choice, not a dealbreaker: Standard and Professional carry no per-transaction fee — a flat annual license instead.
What they mean: “Altru was supposed to do everything. I’m tired of stitching tools together.”
Completely fair — and this isn’t another system to manage. There’s nothing to migrate, no data to reconcile, no new place to log in for records. Social Good reads and writes to Altru in real time, so Altru stays the single source of truth. It’s an approved Blackbaud partner integration, vetted by Blackbaud itself. Think of it as the front door to the house you already own — not a second house.
What they mean: “The last rollout was painful. I’m protecting my team’s time.”
This one gives time back. Most organizations are live in days, not months — setup connects to your existing Altru credentials, so there’s no migration project and no downtime. And the day-to-day effect is fewer support calls, not more: members manage their own accounts and pull up digital cards themselves, group bookings collect payment automatically through Link2Pay, and confusing webforms stop generating “how do I…” emails. The team isn’t learning a burdensome new system — they’re getting hours back.
End on the partnership — every time
The strongest close isn’t a warranty, it’s the relationship. Frame Social Good as a partner, not a vendor — and mean it, because the whole model is built that way. Whatever plan you land on, our goal is the same as yours: a checkout that converts, a membership base that grows, and donations that climb. We win when you win. On every plan you get onboarding, a dedicated account manager, and a team that treats your numbers as their own.
The 90-day proof period fits that same spirit. It isn’t an escape hatch — it’s there because we’d rather earn your confidence than ask for blind trust.
Proof you can take to a CFO
Real customer results
After turning on follow-up emails and upsells inside their Social Good checkout, one organization went from selling a couple of memberships a month to more than ten. Same audience, same offer — a checkout built to convert.
One client enabled guest-paid fee coverage across their checkouts last October. From October through June, guests voluntarily covered over ten thousand dollars in processing fees — money that had been coming straight out of program budgets.
When one organization switched on the optional “cover my credit card fees” box, nearly a third of guests chose to cover the fees in the very first month — putting them on track to grow revenue about 2% over the prior year, just from asking.
These are real customer results, not averages — but they show what the current forms are quietly costing you.
Make the pitch sound like you
“I’m in…”
Tap your role — the talking points swap to what your leadership cares about.
Digital cards kill reprint costs and the “I lost my card” calls; the member portal turns renewals into self-service; a real checkout converts browsers into members.
A mobile-optimized, on-brand checkout means fewer abandoned carts and faster entry; Link2Pay ends phone-tag on group bookings.
On-brand donation pages, honor/memory gifts, and guest-covered fees mean more of every gift reaches the mission.
No migration, no new system of record, real-time read/write to Altru, payments still through BBMS so card data never touches Social Good, on AWS infrastructure at bank-grade standards (PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001). Blackbaud-approved.
Don’t walk into the room alone. Bring backup.
The most reliable way to a yes isn’t a longer email — it’s getting your decision-maker on a short call with our team, who can answer the budget, security, and “why not just Altru” questions directly, in their language.
How to get that meeting (steal this)
- Keep the ask small: “I found a way to increase membership and ticket revenue without switching off Altru or adding to the budget. Can I get 20 minutes on your calendar with their team to see if it’s worth exploring?”
- Frame it as diligence, not a decision: you’re gathering information, not asking for a signature.
- Offer to set it up: “I’ll coordinate the call — you just need to show up and ask hard questions.”
ROI calculator
See what it costs — and what it brings back.
You don’t have to be a numbers person to make a strong case. This turns one figure you already have into something concrete to bring upstairs: the revenue a better checkout could recover for your organization, and what it would actually cost.
How to use this
Built for the people who run memberships, admissions, gardens, and visitor services — not just the finance office. Four steps, a couple of minutes.
- Find one number: your online sales from last year.Tickets, memberships, and donations processed online. Your box office or finance team can give you a rough total — a good estimate is completely fine.
- Type it into the box below.That’s the only number you truly need to see a result.
- Read your two figures.What a better checkout could recover, and what it would cost you. Nudge the sliders down if you’d rather be cautious — the case holds even at the low end.
- Take the number into your conversation.Or better, bring our team onto a call to walk through it with your director together.
For example: a membership coordinator at a botanical garden enters last year’s $400,000 in online sales, sees about $20,000 in recoverable revenue at a cautious 5%, and walks into the director’s office with a real figure instead of a hunch.
Assumptions you control
Conservative by default. Drag to match your own expectations — or to stress-test the low end in front of a skeptic.
Ongoing platform cost
$4,500
3% fee on online sales is $15,000. Guests cover about $10,500. At full opt-in, your ongoing cost is $0.
What a better checkout recovers
$25,000
Revenue previously lost to a clunky checkout, per year.
Estimates for planning conversations, not a guarantee. Figures show ongoing economics — Growth also includes a modest one-time setup investment, not reflected here. Results scale from the assumptions above, which you set, and depend on your traffic, pricing, and how the tools are configured. Real customer outcomes have ranged widely — one organization went from 1–2 memberships a month to 10–14 after turning on checkout follow-ups and upsells.
Walk into the room with your number — then bring our team in to back it up.
Take-it-with-you kit
Everything you need to make the case
A one-page leave-behind (PDF) with the reframe, the objections and counters, and the proof points — sized to forward or drop into a board packet. Grab the one for the plan you’re recommending:
“I got a No.”
Don’t stop here
A first no is rarely a never — it usually points to one of three things worth understanding before you respond. Meet each one where it is:
“Not in this budget cycle.”
This is timing, not rejection. Ask when the next budget conversation happens and set a reminder now. In the meantime, suggest starting on Growth — the upfront investment is modest and guests can cover the ongoing fee — so real results can build before that conversation even arrives. If the upfront cost is the specific sticking point, that’s a good reason to get our team on a call.
“I’m not convinced it’s worth it.”
This is a proof gap, and it’s what the 90-day proof period is for. Reframe it from a decision into a shared experiment: “Let’s watch what it does on our own numbers for 90 days.” Bring our team onto a call to walk through the numbers with them directly.
“We’re not changing anything right now.”
This is usually a fear of disruption, and the reframe answers it: nothing changes for your staff, nothing migrates, and Altru stays exactly as it is. For an IT or risk concern specifically, lean on the security credentials and the approved Blackbaud-partner status — the change is smaller and safer than it sounds.
Whatever happens, keep us in it with you. A no today isn’t the end of the conversation; it’s the start of a longer one. We’re glad to stay alongside you — refining the approach, joining the next meeting, and helping you make the case whenever the timing is right.
