GIK vs. Cash type

Nicole Leyder

One of our committees is donating an item to one of our events.  They are having a local florist decorate the item.  Instead of one person on the committee pooling the funds from each of the committee donors and paying the florist, they instead are sending their checks to us and we will write a check to the florist.

Typically when someone donates an item to an event I would obviously enter it as gift type Gift-In-Kind.  However, they are sending us personal checks or giving us cash, so technically it is a Cash type.  The problem is that now when I try to pull the event revenue, minus the items donated, or how much was donated to the Fund those will all pull in the total when really we no longer have that money because it was given to the florist...  We had this same situation last year and an additional issue was that these donors wouldn't pull in the query when we went to mail our past item (GIK) donors because they were marked as Cash gifts...

Do I continue to enter them as Cash type or should they be entered at GIK since that's their purpose?

Melissa Graves 2

Nicole Leyder:

One of our committees is donating an item to one of our events.  They are having a local florist decorate the item.  Instead of one person on the committee pooling the funds from each of the committee donors and paying the florist, they instead are sending their checks to us and we will write a check to the florist.

Typically when someone donates an item to an event I would obviously enter it as gift type Gift-In-Kind.  However, they are sending us personal checks or giving us cash, so technically it is a Cash type.  The problem is that now when I try to pull the event revenue, minus the items donated, or how much was donated to the Fund those will all pull in the total when really we no longer have that money because it was given to the florist...  We had this same situation last year and an additional issue was that these donors wouldn't pull in the query when we went to mail our past item (GIK) donors because they were marked as Cash gifts...

Do I continue to enter them as Cash type or should they be entered at GIK since that's their purpose?

Cash is cash. They are simply underwriting an expense they know you will have to "nullify" it on your books. You likely have lots of expenses that you "no longer have" once you calculate your net revenue.

I would never advocate using GIK for a cash gift. I think that your business/finance office would disallow it if you asked them as well.

Nicole Leyder

Melissa Graves:

Cash is cash. They are simply underwriting an expense they know you will have to "nullify" it on your books. You likely have lots of expenses that you "no longer have" once you calculate your net revenue.

I would never advocate using GIK for a cash gift. I think that your business/finance office would disallow it if you asked them as well.

Any suggestions how to mark these gifts so that when I query all of the items donated they will show up, too?

Melissa Graves 2

Nicole Leyder:

Any suggestions how to mark these gifts so that when I query all of the items donated they will show up, too?

Not really since you did not technically get an item donated. You purchased an item that was underwritten by donors.

If you want to track donations meant for underwriting such purchases, you have a multitude of ways to do that. Much of this depends on your own current Campaign, Fund, Appeal structure. Maybe an appeal would work, or maybe a fund, or maybe simply an attribute or gift code. Without doing a full evaluation of your system I can't really say which is best.