Your happiest members are already recommending you to their neighbors. A member-get-a-member drive just gives that word of mouth a deadline, a reward, and a way to count it. The hard part in Altru isn’t the offer. It’s knowing, three months later, which new member came from which existing member so you can thank the right person.
Altru doesn’t have a dedicated “referral program” feature that I’m aware of, so the work is in setting up the pieces it does have (appeals, attributes, discounts, queries) before you announce anything. Here’s how I’d put one together.
Decide the offer before you touch Altru
Every setup choice depends on two questions: what does the new member get, and what does the referring member get? Keep both simple enough that a front desk volunteer can explain them in one sentence.
- For the new member: a modest discount on a first-year membership, or a bonus like extra guest passes. Discounts are easier to track because they show up on the transaction.
- For the referrer: something you can fulfill without a cashier making a judgment call. A free month added to their membership, a set of guest passes, or a small shop credit all work. Tiered rewards (“refer three, get a level upgrade”) sound fun but multiply the bookkeeping.
- Who qualifies: decide now whether a lapsed member rejoining counts as “new.” Most organizations say no, and you’ll want to state that in the fine print.
- A firm window: six to eight weeks is long enough to build momentum and short enough that people act.
Set up tracking in Altru
Create an appeal for the drive
Set up a dedicated appeal (and a marketing effort under it if you’ll mail or email existing members). Applying that appeal to every referral membership sale gives you one clean place to report campaign revenue and new member counts, separate from regular joins.
Decide where the referrer’s name lives
This is the piece people skip, and it’s the one that matters. You need the referring member stored on the new member’s record in a way a query can find. Common options:
- A constituent attribute on the new member, such as “Referred by,” holding the referrer’s name or lookup ID. Easy to query, easy for staff to fill in.
- A relationship between the two constituent records. This is cleaner if you want to see the connection from either side, but it takes more clicks per sale.
Asking for the referrer’s lookup ID (printed on most membership cards) instead of a name saves a lot of guessing. “Pat Smith” might match six records; a lookup ID matches one.
Set up the discount or promo code
If the new-member offer is a discount, create it specifically for this drive so it shows up distinctly in reporting. Whether you can require a code for online membership purchases, and how that code surfaces on your web form, depends on your Altru configuration and form setup. Test it in your sandbox, or ask Blackbaud support, before you print the code on anything.
Capturing referrals at each sales channel
At the front desk, give staff a short script: “Did a current member refer you?” If yes, they look up the referrer, apply the discount, attach the appeal, and record the attribute. Put those steps on a laminated card at the register for the length of the drive.
Over the phone or by mail, the membership team handles it the same way, with more time to get the lookup right.
Online is where tracking usually breaks. If your membership web form can’t collect a “referred by” field, new members will simply pay and the referral link is lost. Workarounds include a unique campaign code that tells you the sale belongs to the drive, followed by a short email asking the new member who referred them, or a separate simple form where referrers submit their friends’ names in advance so you can match them later. Neither is perfect, so plan for some manual matching.
Promote it to the right people
Pull a query of current members in good standing and exclude anyone who joined in the last month or two (they’re still figuring out their own benefits). Your strongest referrers are usually long-tenured members and people who visit often. A personal note to that group will outperform a blast to everyone.
Give referrers something they can hand over: a printable card or a short message with the offer and code. The less a member has to explain, the more often they’ll pass it along.
Fulfilling rewards and closing the loop
Run a weekly query of memberships sold with the drive’s appeal, showing the referrer attribute. That one list lets you:
- Spot sales missing a referrer and follow up while it’s still fresh.
- Count referrals per member if you’re using tiers.
- Send rewards on a steady schedule instead of in one overwhelming batch at the end.
When you fulfill a reward, note it on the referrer’s record (another attribute or a note works) so nobody gets thanked twice. Then thank them personally. A referrer who gets a warm note within a week is likely to refer again; one who hears nothing for two months probably won’t.
Measuring whether it worked
At the end of the window, compare drive joins against new member counts for the same period in a prior year. The more useful number comes a year later: do referred members renew at a better rate than members who joined some other way? Because the appeal and attribute are on their records, you can answer that with a renewal query instead of a guess, and use it to decide whether the drive is worth running again.
Quick answers
Can Altru track referrals automatically?
Not as a built-in feature, as far as I know. Treat it as a combination of an appeal, a discount, and a referrer field that staff fill in, then report with queries.
Should gift memberships count?
Many organizations count them if the giver is a current member, since that’s a referral in practice. Just decide up front and record it consistently.
