Marking Waiving Benefits for Higher Tax Deductibility

Susan Aronstam

When people ask to waive benefits for a higher tax deduction on their membership gift, how do you record this in Raiser's Edge? Do you associate it with a specific gift or membership or with the record in general? We currently have it as a solicit code "no benefits" and our members waive their benefits and receive a higher tax deduction. We don't change it from year to year unless they ask us to. Wondering what other organizations do.

Thanks,

Susan

Lindy Kingins

There is a checkbox in RE to waive benefits. It's under Membership/ Benefits in the donor's record. There's a little check box at the top L corner. That's all we do.

Susan Aronstam

Thanks Lindy. do you check the box each year for each membership transaction? In other words, do your members need to request to waive benefits each year as opposed to it being the default after they've requested it?

 

John Heizer

This should be done on a gift-by-gift basis, not donor-by-donor, even if they regularly request no benefits.  The "waive benefits" capability and "receipt amount" on the Gift record are the best way to track who got (or didn't get) what benefits when.

Lindy Kingins

I had to run a query to see who has waived benefits in the past because I wasn't sure if the membership waive benefits has to be re-checked every year. It looks like it does because I see one member that we have who has been doing it every year, but in 2014 it got missed and did not get checked. I also did a quick search of Knowledgebase for an answer, but couldn't find anything. So, I believe that the donor has to indicate when they are renewing their membership if they want to waive benefits for that year. Of course, we do have some long-standing high-profile members who have told us that they wish to waive benefits all of the time so we just know to do those ones automatically.