Gifts included in giving circles/annual report

Lisa Jeffries

Question about the types of gifts you include in your giving circle or annual report lists? We currently include all cash gifts excluding event sponsorships, ticket purchases and auction purchases. We discussed the possibility of including receipt amounts only for those gifts, or perhaps the entire gift amount. Can anyone share their current policy?

​Thank you!

Lisa Jeffries
Alumni & Annual Giving Officer
TTC Foundation

 

Sunshine Reinken Watson

We include anyone at the $250 (cash) level or more on the annual report regardless of whether it is an event ticket, donation or something else. We do not deduct the benefits from that amount on the annual report. Our current philosphy is that we are want to show gratitude and recognize each donor or event attendee regardless of whether they are receiving benefits from their payments.

Faith Murray

Like you, we have always included total cash gift excluding auction items and money purchasing goods or services. We do include ticket purchases (full amount), mostly because at many of our events, we will have one donor paying for seats for 10 people - making it an act of generosity on their part to support our cause. Still, events are not our major source of revenue, and really don't impact our annual report totals very much - if they did, we might quibble the difference a bit more.

Gracie Schild

I agree with the others - we look at what "support" they gave us, whether it was a donation (no benefit) or a sponsorship, ticket, or auction art purchase. We count everything except gifts-in-kind, since that has its own can of worms. Since our "President's Circle" starts at $1000 annually and is tracked with an attribute with an "expiration" date, we can promote anyone to the circle we like. One "exception" to the annual giving rule is someone who gave a huge gift for a multi-year scholarship.  We want to keep cultivating him through President's Circle activities and mailings, even though he hasn't given a dime for the last year or so.  We simply made his "expiration" date 2020. I run a query monthly to check for new potential members (Total Amount of Gifts in this FY = $1000 or more) and we send them a "drop down" letter (don't know what they're really called - the list of letters you can access from the Constituent record) welcoming them to the Circle and including a card.Save as an action and voila - new member!

Lisa Jeffries

Sunshine Watson:

We include anyone at the $250 (cash) level or more on the annual report regardless of whether it is an event ticket, donation or something else. We do not deduct the benefits from that amount on the annual report. Our current philosphy is that we are want to show gratitude and recognize each donor or event attendee regardless of whether they are receiving benefits from their payments.

Thank you so much for the response!!

 

Lisa Jeffries

Thank you all for responding - very helpful! 

Susan Leslie

We only list those who gave a charitable donation in our annual report.  The amount does not matter.  If they attend an event that did not have any charitable portion to the cost or purchased something, they are not counted or listed as a donor in our giving lists.  This is our procedure for all of our giving circles and donor listings.  Charitiable giving only.

Christine Cooke 2

We do  not include event tickets or auction purchases, inkind, any "purchase" for that matter in the Giving by Level list.  They are included under Event Supporters, which is just an alpha list with no $$ levels.


And there is always a discussion for each org as to whether to count the full pledge amount OR the pledge payments every year.  And you have to decide and stick to it or figure out what has been used historically and stick to it.  Any big shift will confuse and irritate the donors.