Pay-what-you-can pricing sounds simple: the guest picks a number and you take it. Altru is built around fixed prices, though. Every event price type has a set amount, and every sale has to land somewhere in revenue. So the work is less about finding a hidden “open amount” setting and more about choosing a structure that feels flexible to the guest and still reports cleanly for your finance team.
There are two structures that work well, and one shortcut to avoid.
Option 1: A ladder of fixed price types
This is the simplest approach to run. Instead of one open-ended price, you give the event three to five price types at different levels and let the guest choose. For example:
- Pay what you can: $5
- Pay what you can: $15 (often labeled as the suggested price, or what it actually costs you to run the program)
- Pay what you can: $30 (helps cover a seat for someone else)
Some organizations add a $0 tier. Others keep a small floor, because free reservations tend to have higher no-show rates and can fill capacity with people who never arrive. Look at your past free events before deciding.
Why this works in Altru:
- Each tier is an ordinary price type, so it works at the front desk, in advance sales, and on your online event registration without special handling.
- Capacity still counts correctly, since every tier is a ticket for the same event.
- Reporting is easy. A query on event registrations grouped by price type shows how many people picked each level, which is the number you need to decide whether to keep the model next season.
The trade-off is that guests can’t type an exact amount. In practice, a well-chosen ladder covers most of what people would have entered anyway, and short labels like “suggested” or “supporter” do a lot of the nudging.
Option 2: A base ticket plus an optional gift
The second approach separates the admission from the generosity. Sell the event at a low base price (or free), then invite a donation of any amount on the same order.
This is the closest to true pay-what-you-want, and it has an accounting advantage: the extra money is recorded as contributed revenue tied to a designation, not as ticket revenue. Donors can get a proper acknowledgment, and your development team sees those gifts on the constituent record alongside everything else they’ve given.
Things to settle before you set it up:
- Where the donation is collected. At the desk, staff can add a donation to the same transaction. Online is the harder part. Whether your current Altru web form can combine an event registration and an open-amount gift in one checkout depends on how your forms are set up, so test it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before you announce the event.
- Which designation the gifts go to. Create or pick one specific to the program (for example, an access fund) so you can report on it later.
- How acknowledgments read. If the base ticket has real value and the donor pays more, the receipt language matters. Ask your finance lead how they want the deductible portion described.
The shortcut to avoid: manual price overrides
It’s tempting to create one “pay what you can” price type and have desk staff change the amount for each guest. Even where your setup and security roles allow price changes at the point of sale, this tends to cause problems:
- It only works in person, so online buyers are stuck with whatever the default price is.
- Variable amounts on a single price type make the revenue hard to analyze. You lose the clear “how many chose each level” picture.
- It puts staff in the awkward position of negotiating a price with each guest in line.
If you’re not sure what your security roles currently allow at the desk, check before the event rather than finding out at the register.
Wording on the event page
Pay-what-you-can events work best when the page explains the model in a sentence or two. Say what the program costs to run, say that every level gets the same experience, and make it clear that nobody will be asked why they chose a lower tier. Keep the price type names short, since they show up on receipts, tickets, and in reports.
Also decide in advance what happens with members. If members normally attend free or at a discount, either add a member price type or tell staff explicitly that members still pick from the ladder. Mixed signals at the desk tend to turn into refunds and complaints later.
After the event
Run your price type query and your designation report together. You’ll see the total, the distribution across tiers, and how much came in as gifts. If most people chose the middle tier, your suggested price was about right. If nearly everyone chose the lowest, the floor or the labels may need another look. That data is what turns a one-time experiment into a program you can budget for.
Where Social Good fits
Both options above can be set up within Altru itself. If the online part is where things get clumsy, Checkouts is our branded, mobile-friendly checkout for tickets, memberships, and donations that works alongside Altru and writes the data back to it. Before relying on it for a pay-what-you-can event, confirm with us how your specific price types and gift options would be presented.
