Workplace Giving hard credit vs soft credit

Ken Waldrop 2

Happy Spring at least finally in the mid-Atlantic. I believe I have seen this discussion before but could not find in the archive.

 

We are have a discussion of hard credit vs. soft credit and who receives.

 

This is specifically to Workplace Giving where there is a third party giving platform (Benevity, YourCause, Truist) where the individual is giving through payroll deduction.

 

Does the individual donor (i.e. employee), company or employer, or the Giving Platform third party get the hart credit? I have always been told hard credit the name on the check and soft credit the donor.

 

However where does the company come in.

 

Thanks for your help in helping us solve this discussion.

Ken

 

Suesan Daily

We have always credited the employee and then soft credited the company if it was known.  When we record matching gifts, we credit the company and then soft credit the employee.

James Kew

Might you have seen something on the fundsvcs listserv?  You might try this link, if I can manage to paste it below:

http://listserv.fundsvcs.org/scripts/wa-FUNDSVCS.exe?A2=ind1803&L=FUNDSVCS&P=R104805

 

Ken Waldrop 2

Thank you Suesan and James. This is helpful

 

JoAnn Strommen

IMO this is one of those cases that is not as straightforward as we'd like. Seems like no two orgs handle it the same. Guess the key is to be consistent with what you believe to be correct. You can find lots of posts related to this here and on fundsvcs.


We HC orgs like Benevity, Truist; SC individual. While the gift is from the individual, it is coming from the agency. It's similar to a donor advised fund. Individual was receipted by agency.


We have a couple of orgs that directly send us the money for employee payroll deductions. In this case, we HC the individual and issue them a tax receipt.

Christine Cooke 2

Ken Waldrop:

Happy Spring at least finally in the mid-Atlantic. I believe I have seen this discussion before but could not find in the archive.

 

We are have a discussion of hard credit vs. soft credit and who receives.

 

This is specifically to Workplace Giving where there is a third party giving platform (Benevity, YourCause, Truist) where the individual is giving through payroll deduction.

 

Does the individual donor (i.e. employee), company or employer, or the Giving Platform third party get the hart credit? I have always been told hard credit the name on the check and soft credit the donor.

 

However where does the company come in.

 

Thanks for your help in helping us solve this discussion.

Ken

 

Hard Credit the employee -- the third party is just a conduit for the $$ to travel to you.  You can note that in the reference field or SC if you so wish, but it's not theirs they are just like the postal service doing a delivery.

Tammy Tsakalios

If it's a matching gift, we hard credit Benevity, soft credit the employee and his employer. If it's through the employee giving program, we HC Benevity and SC the donor.


JoAnn Strommen:

IMO this is one of those cases that is not as straightforward as we'd like. Seems like no two orgs handle it the same. Guess the key is to be consistent with what you believe to be correct. You can find lots of posts related to this here and on fundsvcs.


We HC orgs like Benevity, Truist; SC individual. While the gift is from the individual, it is coming from the agency. It's similar to a donor advised fund. Individual was receipted by agency.


We have a couple of orgs that directly send us the money for employee payroll deductions. In this case, we HC the individual and issue them a tax receipt.

 

Eric Thom

Suesan Daily:

We have always credited the employee and then soft credited the company if it was known.  When we record matching gifts, we credit the company and then soft credit the employee.

I agree but IT says its too many individual transaction to do recon on and using a SC on the donor, even though it's his money works if you modify the export to include SC's BUT you don't want to include all SC's just the workplace. So either do what you do or using the matching gift function. Did you get pushback from the gift processing folk?

Susan Chomsky

We previously thought of these donations as "Third Party" gifts, but recently changed to treating them as Individual giving, because they are, just giving through work. The donors, when identified, get a hard credit IND GL, appeal = Employee Giving, package = Corp Name or Giving Portal. It makes more sense to me. Matching gifts are hard credited to the Corp as it is a Corp gift and Soft credited to the IND. 

Jill Freidmutter

Ah, hard credit vs. soft credit. I handle this like a gift through a donor advised fund. Since the gift is already tax deductible, I hard credit the employer, soft credit the donor and note the vehicle (Benevity, etc.) in the gift reference. The thinking is that the vehicle is similar to the bank that sends the money and really isn't involved in the giving. It seems that there are two (at least) logic paths for hard and soft credits. One records gifts in a gift focused way (hard credit to the actual donor, in this case the employer, and soft credit the employee donor). The other is to align hard and soft credits for best reporting results (hard credit the donor advisor and soft credit the charitable fund). For consistency, I would recommend following your organization's process for donor advised funds with the employee as the "donor advisor" and the employer as the "charitable gift organization".