A $240 family membership is an easy yes for some households and a hard stop for others. Splitting it into twelve $20 payments, or three $80 payments, can turn a “maybe next year” into a member today. The catch is that Altru is built around a membership being sold and paid for in one transaction, so a payment plan takes some deliberate setup and a clear policy.
This guide covers what to decide before you offer installments, the realistic ways to run them alongside Altru, and the bookkeeping traps to avoid.
Start with what Altru does and doesn’t handle
As far as we know, Altru does not offer a built-in “pay monthly” membership option that automatically charges a stored card each month and keeps the membership active as long as payments continue. Releases change, though, so confirm this for your own environment: ask Blackbaud support directly, and test any approach in a sandbox before you sell it to the public.
What Altru does well is record a membership, its term, and the revenue tied to it. So the practical question isn’t “how do I turn on installments?” It’s “how do I collect money over time and still keep the membership record and the revenue accurate?”
Decide the policy before the mechanics
Every installment program runs into the same questions. Answer them in writing first, because they drive which setup makes sense:
- When do benefits start? On the first payment, or only once the full amount is paid? Starting on the first payment is friendlier and sells better; it also means you’ll occasionally have members who stop paying while holding an active card.
- What happens after a missed payment? A grace period, a reminder, then what? Suspend the membership, downgrade it, or shorten the term to match what was paid?
- Which levels qualify? You may want to limit installments to higher-priced levels, where the monthly amount is still worth the staff effort to process.
- How many installments? Three or four payments are far easier to manage by hand than twelve.
- Who owns follow-up? Someone has to watch for missed payments. If nobody is assigned, the program quietly turns into discounted memberships.
Three ways to run it
1. Monthly term memberships
If your membership program allows a one-month term, create a level with that term and a monthly price. Each payment is a renewal of a short term. The membership record always reflects what has actually been paid, and a missed payment simply means the membership lapses on schedule.
The downside is volume: every month is a renewal transaction, renewal notices and cards may churn, and “member since” history depends on your renewal and lapse settings treating on-time payments as renewals rather than rejoins. Check those program settings before launching.
2. Full annual membership, balance tracked separately
Sell the annual membership at full price, activate it on the first payment, and track the remaining balance as money owed. If your Altru setup supports pledges or receivables for this kind of revenue, that is the cleanest place to record it; if you’re unsure, check with Blackbaud support or your finance team before choosing this route, because how the balance is recorded affects revenue reporting and your auditors will care.
This gives the member a normal annual membership and keeps your membership counts clean. It puts the burden on collections: someone has to send reminders and apply each payment to the right record.
3. Annual membership activated on final payment
Collect payments toward the membership and only sell it in Altru once the full amount is in. It is the lowest-risk option for revenue and the least appealing for members, since they pay for months before getting benefits. It works best for short plans, such as two or three payments over a few weeks, or for big-ticket levels where the buyer is planning ahead.
Keep the bookkeeping honest
- Agree on revenue treatment with finance. Whether installment money is recognized when received or allocated across the term is an accounting decision, not a front-desk one.
- Use a consistent source or appeal code. Tag installment memberships so you can pull them in a query later and measure whether the program is working.
- Build a follow-up query. List installment members whose next payment is due or overdue. Review it on a fixed day each month.
- Add a note on the constituent record describing the plan: amount, number of payments, and start date. The next staff member to open the record should not have to guess.
- Don’t store card numbers yourself. If staff are tempted to keep card details in notes or a spreadsheet to “charge next month,” stop that immediately. Collect each payment through a proper payment flow instead.
Test before you announce it
Run two or three internal memberships through the whole cycle: first payment, a second payment, and a deliberately missed one. Confirm the membership dates, the revenue entries, and the cards behave the way your policy says they should. It is much easier to adjust a level or a query now than after a few hundred members are on the plan.
Collecting the later payments
For options 2 and 3, the recurring chore is getting each installment paid without phone calls and manual card entry. Link2Pay lets you send a branded payment link for a set amount, such as a pledge or invoice balance, and the payment posts back to Altru. It doesn’t create an automatic monthly charge, so you still decide when each link goes out, but it means staff no longer have to take each card payment over the phone or at the desk.
Quick answers
Can a monthly plan coexist with regular annual memberships?
Yes. A common approach is to keep annual levels as the default and offer installments only to members who ask for them, tagged so they can be reported separately.
Should installment members pay more?
Some organizations add a small premium to cover processing and staff time; others keep the total the same to encourage uptake. Either works as long as the total is stated clearly up front.
