A member renews online, types their name a little differently than last year, uses a new email address, and the transaction lands on a brand-new constituent record instead of the existing one. Now there are two memberships, one lapsed and one active, and the member’s card number doesn’t match anything they see in their confirmation. A membership number on the web form would have prevented most of that. Showing it back to them afterward would have prevented the rest.
“Show the membership number on the web form” usually means one of two different things. It’s worth separating them, because the answers differ.
- Input: let a renewing member type their membership number so the transaction attaches to the right record.
- Display: show the member their number on the confirmation page, receipt, or email so they can use it at the door or the next time they renew.
First, decide which number you mean
Altru has more than one identifier a member might call “my number.” There’s the constituent’s lookup ID, the membership’s own ID, and whatever is printed on the card or encoded in its barcode. Some organizations use the same value for all three; many don’t. Before you change anything, look at a printed card and a constituent record side by side and write down which field the card actually shows. If staff and members are talking about different numbers, adding a field to the form won’t help.
Letting members enter their number
The goal here is matching, not decoration. A typed number is a much stronger signal than name and email, which change. What we’d check:
- What your membership renewal form already does to find the member. Many renewal flows rely on the member signing in or on name/email/address matching. Find out exactly how yours identifies an existing member, because that’s the behavior a membership number would replace or supplement.
- Whether the form lets you add a custom question. If it does, a “Membership number (optional)” field gives staff something to match on during review, even if Altru doesn’t use it to look up the record automatically. We aren’t certain every Altru web form type supports this, so test it in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before promising it to your membership team.
- How web transactions get reviewed. If someone already reviews incoming web memberships before they’re committed, a typed number makes that review faster and more accurate. If nobody reviews them, a captured-but-unused field just sits there.
Be clear-eyed about the limit: a free-text field that a person has to read is a manual match, not an automatic one. It reduces mistakes; it doesn’t remove the step.
Showing the number back to the member
This side is usually easier to solve, just not always on the web form itself.
- Confirmation page. Check whether your form’s confirmation screen can include record-level fields. If it can only show static text, it won’t display a newly assigned number.
- Acknowledgment or welcome email. This is the more reliable place. A query of new and renewed memberships that includes the number can feed your acknowledgment or welcome email, so every member gets it in writing within a day or so.
- The card itself. If cards are mailed or issued digitally, the number on the card is the one members will use. Make sure the email and the card show the same field.
Clean up what already slipped through
If online renewals have been creating duplicates, the form change only stops new ones. Run a query of recent web memberships where the constituent record was created on the same day as the membership transaction. Those are new records, and some of them will be existing members who weren’t recognized. Merge those before the next renewal cycle so the numbers members have actually point to one record.
A simple policy to adopt
- Every member sees their membership number in writing within 24 hours of joining or renewing.
- Renewal reminders include the number and tell the member to use it when they renew.
- Web memberships with a typed number that doesn’t match the record they landed on get flagged for review, not committed as-is.
Where Social Good fits
The steps above work with what Altru already has. If your current membership web form can’t capture or confirm what you need, Social Good’s Checkouts replaces Altru web forms with a branded, mobile-friendly checkout for memberships, tickets, and donations, and the data writes back to Altru.
Quick answers
Will adding a membership number field stop duplicate records by itself?
Not unless something uses it to match. A typed number helps staff catch the right record during review; it isn’t the same as automatic lookup.
Should the number field be required?
Usually not. Many renewing members won’t have it handy, and a required field they can’t fill is a reason to abandon the form. Make it optional and say where to find it.
