Gift Entry for 5K Race

Jared Ross

Hello,


My company is having a 5k Race and Walk fundraiser next month, and we are using an outside firm to handle the race registration.  When people sign up for the race, they pay through this firm's website, and then the company sends us a monthly check of all registrations, minus the credit card fees.  For example, it costs $25 for the 5k race.  The donor gets charged $25, but then we only receive $21.75 from the race company.  My question is how should I enter this into Raiser's Edge?  In previous years we used Sphere, so the donor's full payment would come directly to us, and our finance department would note the credit card fees as a separate line item in their ledger.  If I enter each race registration as a $25 pledge, there will be an outstanding pledge balance because we are actually receiving less than that.  Does anyone have any experience with situations such as this?  Thanks so much.


Jared

John Heizer

Yes, we do this in many similar scenarios.  The fees are a cost of doing business and the runner should get the full $25 on their record, just as they have in previous years.  I have a "Processing Fees" Constituent record and a Gift Code of "Internal Transfer."  I use a Gift Type of Other on that record to "pay" the remaining pledge balance.  Our Finance department then sees and knows how much to offset the outstanding pledge balances and attribute to our fees line in the general ledger.  It's a bit of a pain to have to do two payments toward each pledge, but it keeps things relatively clean and you're not entering more cash than you're actually getting in the bank.