Your gala holds 300 people. You also want to sell valet parking, a commemorative wine glass, and a pre-dinner VIP tour for 40. Set those up the obvious way in Altru, as extra options on the event, and every parking pass can count as a seat. Sell 150 parking spots and the event shows half full before you’ve sold half the dinner tickets.
The underlying problem is simple. Altru ties capacity to registrations, and an add-on isn’t a registration. It’s something an existing guest buys on top of their seat. Altru doesn’t give you a clean “this item doesn’t count as a person” switch, so you have to choose how to model add-ons. Each approach comes with trade-offs, and the right one depends on what the add-on is.
First, sort your add-ons into two groups
Before you build anything, separate the add-ons that have a real limit from the ones that don’t.
- Limited add-ons have their own cap that has nothing to do with the event’s headcount: 40 VIP tour spots, 80 parking spaces, 25 chef’s-table upgrades.
- Unlimited add-ons are things you can sell as many of as people want, or close enough: a souvenir glass, a drink ticket bundle, a raffle entry, a donation to the cause.
Limited add-ons need something that tracks a count. Unlimited ones only need a price, a revenue line, and a way to show up on the guest’s order. Treating the two groups differently makes most of the design decisions for you.
Option 1: A companion event for the add-on
For limited add-ons, the most common workaround is to set up the add-on as its own special event (for example, “Spring Gala – Valet Parking”) with its own capacity. The main event’s capacity tracks guests. The companion event’s capacity tracks parking spaces. Neither one eats into the other.
Works well when: the add-on has a hard limit, you want a separate count of who bought it, and you want check-in lists for each piece.
Watch out for:
- Guests who buy the add-on without a main ticket. Unless the web form or staff stop them, nothing ties the two purchases together. Run a query before the event that compares registrants on both events and flags anyone who has the add-on but no seat.
- Reporting. Event revenue is now split across two records. Agree up front on how finance will roll them together.
- Confirmation emails. Guests may get two separate confirmations unless your communications are set up to combine them.
Option 2: Sell it as merchandise or a fee
For unlimited add-ons, a separate event is overkill. If you sell retail items at the admissions desk, a souvenir glass or drink bundle can be set up as a merchandise item, which doesn’t touch event capacity at all. Some organizations put flat add-ons such as a coat check charge on the order as a fee.
Works well when: the item has no meaningful cap and you mainly need the revenue posted to the right place.
Watch out for: online availability. Whether Altru’s event web forms will let a guest add a merchandise item or fee to the same online order is something to confirm in your own setup before you promise it on the invitation. If it can’t, these add-ons end up desk-only or sold separately.
Option 3: A registration option that doesn’t add registrants
Special event registration options in Altru carry a number of registrants, which is how a “Table of 10” counts as ten seats. Some administrators try making an add-on a registration option and setting its registrant count as low as the system allows, hoping it won’t draw down capacity.
Be careful here. Whether Altru accepts zero, and how a zero-registrant option behaves in capacity counts, name tags, seating, and check-in, isn’t something to assume. Test it in a sandbox or a throwaway event first, then confirm the behavior with Blackbaud support before you use it on a real event. If it does work in your environment, it’s the tidiest option because everything stays on one order. If it doesn’t, you’ve only lost an afternoon.
Option 4: Build it into a ticket tier
Sometimes the cleanest fix is to stop calling it an add-on. “General Admission” and “General Admission + Parking” as two registration options, each counting as one guest, keeps capacity accurate because every option still represents one person. You lose the ability to sell parking to someone who already bought a ticket, and the number of options grows quickly if you combine several add-ons. For one popular add-on, though, it’s often the simplest choice.
A quick way to choose
- Does the add-on have its own cap? If yes, use a companion event (Option 1), or a tier (Option 4) if there’s only one add-on.
- Is it unlimited and mostly about revenue? Use merchandise or a fee (Option 2).
- Do you need everything on one order and one confirmation? Test Option 3 in a sandbox before you count on it.
Whichever route you take, write down how each add-on is set up and save a query that lists add-on buyers alongside main registrants. The person running next year’s event will need it, and so will whoever builds the check-in lists the night before.
Presenting add-ons at checkout
Altru settings decide how an add-on counts. A separate question is whether guests ever see it. Social Good’s Upsells show memberships and add-ons in the checkout cart as part of our Checkouts product, with the sale written back to Altru. Capacity still depends on how you’ve set up the underlying item in Altru, so pick your model from the options above first.
Quick answers
Can I just raise the event capacity to make room for add-ons?
You can, but then capacity no longer tells you how many guests are coming, and you risk overselling seats. Most teams find a separate count is safer.
Will a companion event show up on the guest’s constituent record?
Yes. It’s a normal event registration, so it appears alongside the main event and can be queried the same way.
