A member who came to your spring lecture, your members’ night, and the holiday lights preview is a very different renewal prospect from one who hasn’t been through the gate since joining. The first person needs a thank-you and an easy renewal link. The second may need a reason to come back before you ask for money again. Altru holds the information to tell them apart. The work is getting it out of event records and into the lists you use for renewal appeals.
This guide covers where attendance lives in Altru, the two main ways to put it to work for renewals, and the mistakes that make attendance-based segments less reliable than they look.
Where attendance actually lives
Attendance data in Altru usually comes from one of three places, and they don’t behave the same way:
- Event registrations. For events set up in Altru’s event management, registrants are tied to constituent records, and staff can mark who attended. This is the cleanest source, but only if someone actually marks attendance after each event. Registered and attended are not the same thing.
- Ticket sales for programs. Daily sales and advance sales for timed programs record a sale, but a walk-up sale may not be attached to a named constituent at all. Advance and online orders usually are.
- Membership scans or check-ins. Member visits recorded at admission can show general engagement, though that is general visitation rather than event attendance.
Before building anything, pull one recent event and compare the registrant list against what your staff remember. If attendance wasn’t marked, or half the guests were bought under one household member’s name, fix the process first. A renewal segment built on incomplete check-in data will thank the wrong people.
Option 1: Query attendance directly when you need it
The simplest approach is to leave attendance where it is and query it each time you plan a renewal appeal. A typical setup:
- Start with a membership or constituent query of members expiring in your renewal window (for example, the next 60 to 90 days).
- Add criteria from event registration data: attended one or more events in the last 12 months, optionally limited to specific event categories such as member events or education programs.
- Save a second version for the opposite group: expiring members with no recorded attendance in that period.
- Turn each query into a selection and use them in your renewal mailings, either as separate appeals or as one appeal with different message text per segment.
The exact fields available depend on which query type you start from and how your events are configured. Open the query designer, browse the event registrant fields, and test against an event where you already know who showed up. If you can’t find an attended flag or date you trust, ask Blackbaud support which source view exposes it rather than guessing from field names.
This option stays current automatically, because the query reads the event records every time it runs. The trade-off is that the criteria can get complicated, and staff who pull lists occasionally may not know which saved query is the right one.
Option 2: Stamp attendance onto the constituent record
Some teams prefer a visible marker on the constituent itself, so anyone opening the record sees “Attended member event, 2026” without running a query. Constituent attributes are the usual tool for this. You might create an attribute such as “Event attendee” with a year or event category as the value, then add it in bulk from an attendance query after each event or each quarter.
This makes renewal lists easy to pull and gives front-line staff useful context when a member calls. It also means someone has to keep it up to date. If the attribute is only applied when a staff member remembers, the segment slowly drifts out of date. Put the update on a calendar, tie it to a specific saved query, and note in the attribute description how it gets applied.
Whichever option you choose, decide whether attendance counts at the household level. If one spouse registered for the gala and both attended, a strictly individual view may label the other partner as not engaged, even though they are the one whose name is on the membership.
Turning segments into better renewal asks
Attendance is most useful when it changes what you say, not just who you send to:
- Engaged attendees: name what they came to, preview what’s coming for members next season, and make renewal one click. Upgrade asks often land best here.
- Members with no attendance: lead with an invitation before the ask. A free member preview or a reminder of benefits they haven’t used can do more than a third renewal notice.
- Non-member attendees: people who paid full price for several programs are strong join prospects, and the savings math is easy to show them.
After the campaign, compare renewal rates between the segments. That tells you whether attendance is worth the effort to track at your organization, and whether marking attendance after every event deserves to become a firm rule.
Getting segments into your email platform
Many organizations send renewal emails from Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or a similar tool, which means re-exporting the attendance query every time a list changes. Social Good’s Data Bridge syncs Altru query results to tools like Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and ActiveCampaign, so an “expiring members who attended an event” query can feed an audience or a shared sheet without manual exports. Altru stays the place where attendance and membership data is maintained. The sync simply carries the query results to where your emails go out.
Quick answers
Does buying a ticket count as attending?
Not on its own. A sale shows intent, not attendance. If the distinction matters for your messaging, rely on events where attendance is actually marked or tickets are scanned.
Should I use attributes or queries?
Queries are always current but harder for occasional users. Attributes are easy to see and filter but need a maintenance routine. Many teams use a query as the source and apply an attribute from it on a schedule.
