Connecting gifts to constituents that are being sponsored.

Mary Dudley

When someone gives a donation that they would like to be used to offset a specific child's tuition that is not their own, we call that being an Angel Donor, and I enter the gift using the Fund Angel Donor.  Obviously, the constituent who is notated on the gift is the donor, but I am trying to think of the best way to notate which student they want to help.  I have been using the Gift reference and also the Package under a Tuition Assistance Appeal, but I am wondering if anyone has figured out a good way to notate it so that when I open the student's constituent record, I would be able to see who has helped them and how much.  Do you have any suggestions? Or have you heard of anyone else doing this?

JoAnn Strommen

Mary,

To have it appear on student's record I would consider a relationship/reciprocal with names of something like Angel Donor/Angel Donor designee.  To me that would be the easiest.  Would still need to open donor record to see amount.  I would not soft credit student. 


(And please tell me, you do not recognize this as a tax deductible gift - not allowed as directed toward specific person.)


Maybe you'll hear from an educ org that does this.  This is just what I'd consider if I needed to record something like that.

Christine Robertson

In addition to what JoAnn said (all great advice), you can also consider creating a Gift Attribute for the student name.  That would help when you need to search for these gifts and could potentially give you the option to create specific gift reports (using Pivot or Crystal) if necessary.

Melissa S Graves

RED FLAG - this payment should go to the registrars office and not into RE as no donor is allowed to direct their gift to any specific student per IRS regulations. It is not a gift. No need to worry about how to put it in RE then.

Nicole S

Christine McMinn:

In addition to what JoAnn said (all great advice), you can also consider creating a Gift Attribute for the student name.  That would help when you need to search for these gifts and could potentially give you the option to create specific gift reports (using Pivot or Crystal) if necessary.

I don't know what all the rules are for gifts like these, so follow up on what Melissa has said.  But if you need to link a gift to a specific person, you can create an attribute that links to a specific record and is a look up field to link to other constituents instead of a free text field.

Christine Cooke 2

What Jo Ann said -- and yes, these funds are not tax deductible when they are directed for tuition and designated to a particular student.  Now -- a fuzzy area may be that your Angel Fund may be a scholarship fund in general and the student is a recipient?  Another option - since it is not tax deductible is to enter it in RE as a gift but make the Angel Fund a "pass through" fund that is not reported as income for Development/Advancement Department.  There are several times I have done this sort of thing so that we can see the whole giving picture/interest of donor(s) in one place.


Nonetheless, I have worked at several schools -- and yes we want to know that a student has received tuition assistance vs scholarship funding, whether you record those monites in RE or not.  


So you can either do a relationship of Angel Donor/Angel Recipient or you can do an attribute on the student record that notates that they are the recipient of Angel Funds or other awards.  It is your choice whether you put this info on their Education Attribute for your school or their Constit Attribute.  One other thing -- I would assume that if the donor is designating to a particular student, they have a  personal relationship with them.  So if you do use Relationship to show the Angel info, you would I think have another relationship with the same person that shows their personal relationship -- i.e., grandparent, aunt/uncle, friend etc.