A visitor lands on your online event listing, sees “Members’ Night at the Garden” and a date, and has no idea whether it costs $15 or $150, or whether there’s a child price at all. To find out, they have to click into the event, sometimes pick a date first, and only then see the registration options. A share of them never get that far, and the rest call the front desk to ask.
The fix people usually want is simple to describe: show each event’s ticket types (adult, child, member, non-member) and their prices right on the landing page where events are listed. Getting there in Altru is less simple. This article covers what’s realistic, what to test before you promise it to anyone, and the workarounds organizations use when the native page won’t cooperate.
Why the price isn’t on the list page
In Altru, an event’s ticket types and prices live on the event itself as its registration options. The online listing page is built to help someone pick an event; the price detail is shown once they’ve chosen one. That split makes sense from a data point of view, since one event can carry several options with different prices and eligibility rules, but it means the summary page usually shows little more than the event name, date, and whatever description you’ve written.
Whether you can change what that listing page displays depends on how your online sales pages are set up and which display options your version exposes. We’re not aware of a setting that automatically pulls registration options onto the listing, but layouts and options do change. Before you build a workaround, confirm the current behavior:
- Open the event listing page in your test or sandbox environment and review every display and layout option available for it.
- Check whether the listing includes the event description, and how much of it appears before it gets truncated.
- Ask Blackbaud support directly whether registration options can appear on the listing page. Ask for the answer in writing so the next person on your team doesn’t have to ask again.
Workaround 1: Put the prices in the event description
The lowest-effort option is to write the ticket types into the description field for each event, which usually does show on the listing. Something short works best:
Adults $20 · Members $12 · Children 3–12 $8 · Under 3 free
The catch is that this is a second copy of the price. If someone changes a registration option and forgets to update the description, your listing page now shows the wrong number, and the visitor finds out at checkout. If you go this route:
- Make “update the description” a line on whatever checklist your team uses when setting up or editing an event.
- Keep the format identical across events so it’s easy to scan and easy to spot when one is off.
- Periodically compare descriptions against registration options. A simple event query listing each event’s options and prices makes this a five-minute check.
Workaround 2: Build the landing page on your own website
Many organizations stop sending people to the default listing page at all. Instead, the events page on their main website does the selling: photo, short description, ticket types and prices, and a button that goes straight to that event’s registration page in Altru.
This gives you full control over layout, lets your marketing team write the copy, and keeps the price visible where people decide. It has the same duplication risk as the description approach, plus one more: if a direct event link changes or an event is cancelled, the button on your site can go stale. Test every link after each new event goes live, and remove past events promptly.
Which approach fits
- A handful of events a year with stable pricing: description field is fine.
- Regular programming or a marketing team that owns the website: a website landing page is worth the setup.
- Frequent price changes or many member/non-member variations: either works, but the audit step stops being optional.
Things that help no matter what you choose
- Name registration options for the public. “Adult Non-Member” reads better online than an internal code. Whatever the option is called is often what the buyer sees at checkout.
- Say who qualifies. If member pricing requires logging in or entering a member ID, state that next to the price so members aren’t surprised.
- Mention sold-out or limited options. If a ticket type tends to sell out, say so up front rather than letting someone discover it after clicking through.
Where Social Good fits
If the bigger goal is a clearer buying experience overall, Checkouts is our branded, mobile-friendly checkout that replaces Altru webforms for tickets, memberships, and donations, with Apple Pay and Google Pay, and it writes the transactions back to Altru. It doesn’t remove the need to decide how and where you present event pricing, but it gives you more say over what buyers see once they’re ready to purchase.
Quick answers
Will changing a registration option price update my event description?
No. The description is free text. Any price you type there has to be updated by hand.
Can I link directly to one event instead of the full listing?
In most setups, yes, each event has its own registration page you can link to. Test the link in a private browser window to make sure it opens the right event and doesn’t require a login you didn’t intend.
