Open the constituent record for a family that has belonged for ten years and you may find a long stack of membership cards: last year’s, the year before, a replacement for a lost card, a card for a nanny who is no longer on the membership. Only one or two of them are good today. When a front desk associate is scanning that list with a line forming behind the guest, the old cards are noise, and sometimes they cause real mistakes, like admitting someone on a card that lapsed two seasons ago or reprinting the wrong one.
So the natural question is how to hide or gray out the expired and cancelled cards. The honest answer: as far as we know, Altru does not offer a simple setting that fades or hides expired cards on the constituent record. History stays visible because it is history. What you can control is how quickly staff can tell current from old, and how many stale cards pile up in the first place.
Confirm what your version shows before building workarounds
Altru changes over time, and what your staff see depends on their security role and how the record is laid out for them. Before investing in a process, spend ten minutes checking:
- Whether the membership area of the constituent record lets you sort or filter by status or expiration date in your current release.
- Whether the card list shows the expiration date and status columns, or whether staff have to click into each one.
- What happens to a card when its membership is cancelled versus when it simply expires. Test both in a sandbox or on a test constituent, not a real member.
If you can’t tell whether a filter exists, ask Blackbaud support directly. It is a quick question, and the answer saves you from designing around a limitation that may already be handled.
Make “current” the first thing staff look at
Since the old cards will still be on the record, the goal is to stop staff from reading the card list at all for routine admission. A few habits help:
- Check the membership, not the card. Train desk staff to confirm the membership status and expiration date first. If the membership is active, the guest is a member, regardless of which card they hand over. If it is lapsed, no card on the record makes them current.
- Use membership lookup at the point of sale. Looking a member up during a sale generally surfaces their current membership rather than the full card history. Make that the default path at the desk instead of opening the constituent record.
- Write a one-line rule. Something like “Only cards with an expiration date after today are valid; for anything else, look up the membership.” Tape it next to the register. Seasonal staff will follow a rule faster than they will learn the record layout.
Reduce the pile of old cards
A lot of the clutter is self-inflicted. Look at when your organization creates new cards:
- At every renewal? If a new card is issued every year even though the member already has a physical card, each renewal adds another line. Some organizations print new cards only when the design changes or a member asks.
- For replacements? When a lost card is reprinted, make sure the old one is marked cancelled or otherwise flagged per your process, so it stands apart from the active card.
- When members are added or removed? If a secondary member or caregiver leaves the membership, their card should be dealt with at the same time, not left looking active.
Fewer cards on the record is the most reliable “hide” you have.
Give supervisors a clean list instead
For anyone who needs to answer “which cards are actually valid right now,” a query is cleaner than the record. Build a membership query filtered to active memberships and cards with an expiration date on or after today, including constituent name, card number, and member names. Save it where desk leads can run it. You can also build the reverse: cards that are still not marked cancelled but belong to memberships that have lapsed. That second list is a good cleanup target once a quarter.
At the door
If you scan cards for admission, the scan result is where an expired card should be caught, not the constituent record. Test it: scan a card from a lapsed membership and a cancelled replacement card and confirm what your setup does with each. If either one comes back as valid, fix that before worrying about how the record looks.
Quick answers
Can I delete old membership cards so they disappear?
Be careful. Card and membership history can matter for reporting, “member since” dates, and audit questions. Check with Blackbaud support about what deleting does in your version, and test it on a non-member record first. Marking cards cancelled is usually safer than deleting them.
Does an expired card still work?
The card itself is just an identifier. What matters is whether the membership behind it is current, and whether your admission process checks that. Test with real lapsed examples to be sure.
