A film night in the auditorium, a lecture series with a donor front row, a holiday concert in the courtyard: sooner or later someone asks whether guests can pick Row C, Seat 12 when they buy their ticket in Altru. The short answer is that Altru is built around capacity, not seat maps. You can sell a seated event well in Altru, but assigned seating takes some deliberate setup and, depending on how strict your seating needs to be, a bit of manual work or a second tool.
This guide covers what Altru handles on its own, three practical ways to run reserved seating around it, and what to do about getting seat numbers onto the ticket.
What Altru gives you out of the box
Altru’s ticketing model is built for general admission. Programs and events have a capacity, timed or scheduled offerings draw down that capacity as tickets sell, and price types (adult, member, child, and so on) control what each ticket costs. That works for nearly everything a museum or zoo sells.
What it does not appear to offer is an interactive seat map where a buyer or cashier clicks a specific seat and that seat is locked to the order. We have not seen that in daily sales, advance sales, or Altru web forms. Blackbaud does change the product, so if seat selection is critical for you, confirm the current state with Blackbaud support or check the most recent release notes before you design around it. Assume for planning purposes that you will be working with capacity and labels rather than individual seats.
Three ways to run reserved seating with Altru
1. Sell sections, not seats
For most venues this is the best fit. Instead of individual seats, sell zones: Orchestra, Balcony, Front Row, Accessible Seating. Each zone becomes its own sellable unit with its own capacity, either as a separate event or program, or as a distinct price type if your setup lets you cap it.
- Pros: Altru enforces the capacity per zone, so you cannot oversell the front row. Reporting by zone is straightforward. The zone name shows up in the order, on receipts, and usually on the printed ticket.
- Cons: Guests know their section but not their exact seat. Within a section, it is first come, first seated, or ushers place people.
Before you commit, test in a sandbox or on a low-stakes event whether separate events or capped price types works better with your web forms and reports. Separate events are easier to cap cleanly; price types keep everything on one event but can be harder to limit.
2. Sell capacity in Altru, assign seats afterward
When guests truly need a specific seat (a small screening room, a gala-style lecture), sell the event at its full capacity in Altru, then assign seats yourself from an order list.
- Build a query of orders for that event that returns the constituent name, order number, quantity, and any notes.
- Export it and lay the orders onto a seating chart in a spreadsheet. Seat members or donors first if that is your policy.
- Send each buyer their seat numbers by email before the event, and keep a printed chart at the door.
- Record the assignment somewhere findable, such as a note on the order or an attribute, so the desk can answer “where am I sitting?” without the spreadsheet.
This is honest manual work, and it scales poorly past a couple hundred seats. For a monthly film series with sixty seats, it is very manageable. One tip: close online sales a few hours before the event so the chart is final when you print it.
3. Use a reserved-seating platform for those events only
If you run a true theater with frequent, fully assigned performances, a dedicated reserved-seating ticketing tool may be the right answer for that venue. The tradeoff is that those sales live outside Altru unless you bring them back in. Plan how revenue gets recorded (often as a summarized batch per performance) and how buyers get added or matched to constituent records, so your membership and donor history stays complete. Talk to your finance team about this before you sign anything.
Printing row and seat numbers on tickets
Altru lets you customize ticket layouts to a degree, typically with fields such as event name, date and time, price type, and order details. A dedicated seat or row field is not something we would count on being available. Here is what tends to work:
- Put the location in a name that already prints. If you sell by section, name the event or price type so it reads clearly on the ticket, for example “Balcony” rather than “Price Level 2.”
- Use will-call envelopes. For assigned seats, print tickets as usual and write or label the seat number on the envelope or ticket before doors open.
- Seat stickers. A sheet of pre-printed labels (Row C, Seat 12) applied at pickup is low-tech and fast with a volunteer.
- Put it in the confirmation email. Many guests will look at their email or phone before the paper ticket, so make sure the seat assignment appears there.
Before you redesign a ticket layout, check what fields your version of Altru exposes in ticket design, and print a test on your actual ticket stock. Field lengths and fonts on thermal printers can surprise you.
Choosing the right approach
- Occasional seated events, flexible seating is fine: sell sections.
- Small rooms, guests expect a specific seat: sell capacity, assign afterward.
- A regular performance venue with fixed seats: evaluate a reserved-seating platform and plan the data flow back into Altru first.
Whichever you choose, write it down for front-desk staff: how seats are assigned, where the chart lives, and what to tell a guest who asks to move. Most seating problems at the door come from staff not knowing which method this particular event uses.
Quick answers
Can buyers choose a seat on an Altru web form?
Not as an interactive seat map, as far as we know. Selling sections as separate options is the closest you can get on a standard form. Confirm with Blackbaud if anything has changed.
Can I block off seats for VIPs or accessibility?
Yes, in practice. Either reduce the public capacity and hold those seats aside, or create a separate section for them that is not offered online.
