Dealing with changes in workplace campaign reporting

Annelise Holverstott

Is anyone else seeing changes in workplace campaign reporting over the past couple of years? How are you dealing with it?



My organization has a follow-the-check rule that is not going to change, so this is how we've been coding donations made through external workplace campaigns:

1 - Individual employee donor gets "other"-type gift for his/her entire payroll pledge for the year, per the designation report we receive in the spring. They also get non-tax acknowledgment at this time.

2 - Company gets HC for each payout, but no acknowledgment 



However, this approach relies on getting designation reports from the campaigns every year. I used to get reports for virtually every campaign, but over the last couple of years, fewer and fewer campaigns are providing designation information. This has really caused some coding headaches. Now I have some workplace donors with one "other" gift for the entire year and some with "other" gifts for every individual payment, and I have to keep track of which donors have already been thanked. Ideally, we'd have a single process for all workplace gifts. Any suggestions?

Rob Crenshaw

My org used to do it the way you are describing, Annelise, and it caused a lot of problems in the past both in terms of reporting and also proper tracking of MG-pay cashes. Currently, our method is to HC the employee/donor and we use the reference field and a custom gift attrbute as the primary means of linking them back to the company. We also receive individual checks from employee donors that are subject to needing a tax receipt, so they align nicely with the rest which we generally import into RE from payout reports (when available.) 



However, as you'll probably all too aware, there will also be those random WPGs that you just cannot get a report for in a timely manner. For these, we put them under a generic Anonymous record with the reference and gift attribute as a lump sum which we can then adjust later if we ever get access to the donor report. 



But since you said your org's "follow the check" rule is inflexible, I'd start a discussion with them about what that really means. Is it for IRS reporting purposes or a philosophical matter? We have also instituted another gift attribute we call "Name on Check" that merges into our acknowledgement letter templates and allows us to input whatever name appears on the check itself, thereby sidestepping the whole mess of who the tax receipt is addressed to. Maybe something like that would satisfy the reasons?

JoAnn Strommen

Like Rob, we also started out with 'the check" but over time have adjusted for reason's he cited and getting correct information on who the donor is.  We've found one set procedure for all gifts on behalf of another person does not fit. If gifts come from a 501(c)(3), they become the donor (ex: United Way).  If gifts are for payroll deductions and check is from company, the individual is the donor. 



While I haven't seen changes in workplace giving reports, I have run into a few more orgs (fraternal orgs) that send $ on behalf of a member but they don't give us break out of amount for each person.  What I find ironic is that if there's just one person, I have name and the amount, but if there's two or more I just have the names and total amount and they will not give me the breakout. 



Something you could consider is for those with year-long payroll pledge, in your acknowledgement letter tell them you'll send them acknowledgment of their gift at year end.  Our procedure is to receipt and/or acknowledge all gifts as they are processed, so if it's an annual, quarterly or monthly gift we deal with needed mail when batch is committed.



As Bob suggested, it may be time to open a discussion on if procedure is accurate, best and working for you.

Annelise Holverstott

Thanks for your feedback. Of course, I'm not the person who makes the decisions around here (or let's face it, even sits in the meetings where everyone else makes decisions)...but you have some creative suggestions that might indeed appeal to my betters. Thanks!