Letters for Gift In Kind donations

Maruska Moore

My organization recently started crafting letters for gift in kind donations. Before this new procedure, I previously would provide the donor a form for them to complete to write their assumed donation amount and enter into RE as DNAck. With event donations, this was handled by the Events Manager.I recently created a GIK batch we mark the amount as $0.00 and enter the estimated Value in the reference section for the gift.

After I batched the in-kind donations I tried to create an acknowledge ment letter but none were created.



How have you created a gift in kind letter for batches when the  amount is set to $0.00?

JoAnn Strommen

Yes, you should be able to do it.  On your acknowledgement set up go to tab 4 - gifts types or if using receipts go to tab 7 - gift types and uncheck the box "exclude zero amount gifts".  I've used this option when doing a batch of GIK.  That should do it.

Jen Claudy

If you want to keep track of the value (we call it "Donor Declared Value") in a currency field, you can set the Gift Amount to $0.00 and the Receipt Amount to the amount declared.  So long as none of your other reports run off of the Receipt Amount.

Barbara Krause

We acknowledge everyone regardless of the gift type!  All of our $$ and GIK acknowledgments are done in Word using the Microsoft Word Wizard OR a simple "Donor Acknowledgment" merge and saved with corresponding gift batch number in Word (in case donor calls for a replacement letter).  Posting in RE, we use the specific gift type (Gift-in-Kind) to enable reporting for those non cash type gifts.  If you don't want to inlcude the donor declared value, just don't include the gift amount in your document.  If a contributor doesn't include a value when they drop off the contribution then it's value becomes $0.00.  The Gift Reference field is used only for the Gift Description.  This is helpful because it enables our Exec Director to have a detailed printout at week end of all contributions (Cash, Gift-in-Kind, Recurring, Pledges, etc.) received throughout the week; the value and description of each, sorted by gift type.

Nicole S

Make sure that the donor acknowledgment mail merge doesn't have "exclude zero amount gifts" box checked on the gift types tab.

Maruska Moore

Barbara Krause:

We acknowledge everyone regardless of the gift type!  All of our $$ and GIK acknowledgments are done in Word using the Microsoft Word Wizard OR a simple "Donor Acknowledgment" merge and saved with corresponding gift batch number in Word (in case donor calls for a replacement letter).  Posting in RE, we use the specific gift type (Gift-in-Kind) to enable reporting for those non cash type gifts.  If you don't want to inlcude the donor declared value, just don't include the gift amount in your document.  If a contributor doesn't include a value when they drop off the contribution then it's value becomes $0.00.  The Gift Reference field is used only for the Gift Description.  This is helpful because it enables our Exec Director to have a detailed printout at week end of all contributions (Cash, Gift-in-Kind, Recurring, Pledges, etc.) received throughout the week; the value and description of each, sorted by gift type.

Thanks for the letter that is a good way to include it. We write ours a bit differently but this will work. 

Christine Cooke 2

I still put the estimated or fair market value in the Gift Amount.  I just do not include it in the body of the letter.  Instead of including the $$ amount field, I include the Reference field that has the description of what was given as an inkind gift.



I also want the option of having inkind gifts showing up on financial reports, so I will put a value of $.01 cent on those inkind gifts where we do not have a value.  But since the inkind have a different gift type and different Fund/Account, they are easy enough to include or exclude.

 

Maruska Moore

JoAnn Strommen:

Yes, you should be able to do it.  On your acknowledgement set up go to tab 4 - gifts types or if using receipts go to tab 7 - gift types and uncheck the box "exclude zero amount gifts".  I've used this option when doing a batch of GIK.  That should do it.

This was exactly the step that I was missing. Thank you JoAnn!

Gracie Schild

Hi - we actually do the recording of the value the other way around.  The declared value is what we enter as the GinK gift amount, and we set the receipt amount to $0.  We do that because a) most of our GinKs are art donated for our gala and we want to track the stated value and the sale price (a Gift Attribute called "GinK Sold") for future reference; and b) the Receipt amount is used in various places as the tax-deductible amount.  When we record the sale of the art, that also has a $0 receipt amount (unless the purchaser paid more than the stated value, in which case the difference is their tax-deductible portion).  We have a special "master batch" for each kind of gift that has special field requirements, and the GinKs have the receipt amount included in the batch fields and set to $0 by default so we won't forget to mark it as such.  We don't record GinKs as income or post them to the books, but we keep them off by selecting Gift Types to include/exclude.



All our batches are run through a "Master Ack Letter" conditional merge in Mail with all the various letters for different types of gifts or funds.  For the GinK letter, there is only the blurb about not stating value and no tax-deductible portion is indicated (and a clever insert of the Reference field so you don't have to retype the description of the donation!), so we could skip this entire issue - except for the fact that the Summary Reports we send to major donors in January show all their gifts with the tax-deductibility of each. Since ticket and table sales for the gala have the benefits attached that change the tax-deductible portion automatically, we really want to have the Receipt amount ALWAYS reflect the tax-deduction.  



Two items of note: we're about to change our acknowledgement of GinKs with a value under $50 (probably) to just a standard postcard or similar because the paperwork is just as onerous for a donation of 2 paperbacks to the library as it is for a sculpture worth several thousand dollars.  The other point - and I'd love to hear from others - is that we have had problems with the Benefit of the gala ticket price "sticking" consistently.  I'm having (another) screenshare session tomorrow with BB support because they can't reproduce the problem in the lab.  Has anyone else experienced this?  In the same batch, one or two random gifts to which the benefit is applied will not have an adjusted receipt amount.  It doesn't happen all the time or to one type of gift or person - just here and there without warning. I think I'll start a different thread...



Hope that all helps someone in some situation!



Gracie