A gift membership has two people attached to it: the person who paid and the person who gets the card. Auto-renewal assumes those are the same person. That mismatch is why setting up auto-renew for gift memberships in Altru is harder than it looks, and why the right answer is often a policy decision before it is a configuration one.
This guide covers what to confirm in your own Altru setup, the questions you need to answer before charging anyone a second time, and the practical options most organizations end up choosing between.
Start by confirming what your Altru instance actually supports
How Altru handles automatic renewals depends on your configuration, your payment processing setup, and which sales channels you use (front desk, web forms, phone). Whether an auto-renew option can be attached to a membership purchased as a gift, and whose stored card it would charge, is not something we would state as a blanket yes or no for every site.
Before planning around it, test it:
- Use a sandbox or test constituents. Create a gift membership with a test giver and a test recipient, through the same channel your buyers actually use. If most gifts are sold online, test the web form, not just the desk.
- Look at both constituent records afterward. Check who is listed as the member, who is recorded as the giver, and where any stored payment information lives.
- Check what renewal would look like. See whether the membership shows any recurring or automatic renewal indicator, and which constituent it is tied to.
- Ask Blackbaud support if anything is unclear. Describe the exact scenario: “giver pays, recipient is the member, we want the giver’s card charged at expiration.” A precise question gets a precise answer.
Write down what you find. Whatever the result, the decisions below still apply.
Decide who should be charged at renewal
This is the real question, and it has three possible answers.
The giver renews it again
Some gifts are meant to be ongoing, like a grandparent who gives a family membership every year. Charging the giver automatically can make sense here, but only with clear, explicit consent at the time of purchase. Someone buying a one-time birthday present does not expect a charge twelve months later, and a surprise renewal on a gift is the kind of thing that turns into a chargeback and an angry phone call.
The recipient takes it over
For many organizations, the goal of a gift membership is conversion: the recipient enjoys a year of visits and then renews on their own. In that case auto-renew on the gift itself is the wrong tool. The recipient never agreed to a payment method, and the giver did not agree to keep paying. What you want is a strong renewal invitation sent to the recipient, plus an easy way for them to join on their own card.
It simply expires
The default for a one-time gift. Nothing renews automatically, and the membership lapses unless someone acts. This is the safest choice when you have no clear consent from anyone.
Plenty of organizations support more than one of these. The key is that the buyer chooses at checkout, and your records capture that choice.
A setup that works without native auto-renew on gifts
If testing shows that auto-renew does not fit gift memberships cleanly in your setup, you can still get most of the benefit with tools Altru already has.
- Record the giver’s intent. Add a clear marker to the gift sale, such as an attribute or a note, for “giver wants to renew next year” versus “one-time gift.” Keep the wording consistent so you can query on it.
- Build two renewal queries. One finds gift memberships expiring in the next 60 to 90 days where the giver opted to renew; it returns the giver’s contact information. The other finds one-time gifts nearing expiration; it returns the recipient’s.
- Send different messages to each group. Givers get “Your gift to [recipient] is coming up for renewal.” Recipients get “We hope you enjoyed your year. Here is how to keep your membership going.”
- Make the recipient’s path easy. When a recipient renews on their own, they become the payer. That is the natural point to offer automatic renewal, because now the person paying and the person holding the card are the same.
- Check household and relationship links. If the giver and recipient are in the same household, make sure renewal mail is not landing twice at the same address, or confusing the person who never paid.
Things to get right before charging any giver automatically
- Consent wording at checkout. State plainly that the card will be charged again at expiration, the amount or how it is determined, and how to cancel.
- A reminder before the charge. Notify the giver ahead of renewal, not just after. Check your payment processor’s rules and any applicable state laws on automatic renewal disclosures; they vary.
- Expired cards. A card on file from a holiday purchase may be expired by the following year. Decide in advance what happens when a renewal payment fails, and who follows up.
- Price changes. If membership levels or prices change, decide whether gift renewals move to the new price and tell givers before it happens.
- Acknowledgment and tax receipts. Renewal receipts and any benefit-value language should go to the person who paid, not the recipient.
Quick answers
Should gift memberships auto-renew by default?
Usually not. Make it an explicit opt-in for the giver, and treat one-time gifts as non-renewing.
Can a recipient switch a gift membership to their own auto-renewal?
That is the cleanest path, since the recipient becomes the payer. Confirm in a test environment how your Altru setup records the change from gift to self-purchased so membership history stays continuous.
Who gets the renewal notice for a gift?
Whoever is going to pay. If the giver opted to renew, the giver. Otherwise, the recipient, with an invitation to continue on their own.
