Changing Gift Type to "Other" during Event Registration Batch

Crystal George · July 2016

We are new to NetCommunity, only hosting events on the system for the last few months. We've noticed that all event registrations come through as "Gifts" and since we also support add-on donations while a user registers for an event we want to be able to separate this income by coding it as "Other" under "Gift Type" in the batch, instead of "Cash." We have it set as to "Other" as default, but changes in the batch.

Elizabeth Rossi · July 2016

Dear Crystal,

First Im not really understanding what "add-on" donations are? When donations come over netcommunity they are coming as cash in, why would you use other?

Do you mean that they make more than 1 donation to the event, ie: honorary committee, ticket price, etc and then do a donation to say Children's Hospital? it is still cash, you should only use Other for gifts like Gift in kind, wire transfers, etc. At least that is what we do. you could do split gifts, go up to the Gift tab under Batch and click on Split and direct two or more gifts within that batch, do you use appeals and campaigns? I guess i am not understanding the question. Could you explain a little more. My email is rossie@mail.amc.edu. Thanks.

Crystal George:

We are new to NetCommunity, only hosting events on the system for the last few months. We've noticed that all event registrations come through as "Gifts" and since we also support add-on donations while a user registers for an event we want to be able to separate this income by coding it as "Other" under "Gift Type" in the batch, instead of "Cash." We have it set as to "Other" as default, but changes in the batch.

Eva Jablow · July 2016

Crystal George:

We are new to NetCommunity, only hosting events on the system for the last few months. We've noticed that all event registrations come through as "Gifts" and since we also support add-on donations while a user registers for an event we want to be able to separate this income by coding it as "Other" under "Gift Type" in the batch, instead of "Cash." We have it set as to "Other" as default, but changes in the batch.

Hi Crystal! If I were you, I would go the Appeal route for this, rather than changing the gift type. The truth is, it's still a cash payment, so it seems like using an Event Registration appeal would be a great way for you to be able to attribute those payments approrpriately without messing with the gift type (and running into that batch override issue). If you need to split a gift, you can easily make the appeal for the "true gift" part of it a different one and easily differentiate between the two. I hope this helpful! -Eva

Eric Baerg · July 2016

Crystal George:

We are new to NetCommunity, only hosting events on the system for the last few months. We've noticed that all event registrations come through as "Gifts" and since we also support add-on donations while a user registers for an event we want to be able to separate this income by coding it as "Other" under "Gift Type" in the batch, instead of "Cash." We have it set as to "Other" as default, but changes in the batch.

If I'm understanding the question correctly, you're looking for a way to record registration fees and donations separately from each other. The way that we do this at our organization is to mark the registration fee as an "Other" gift type, while leaving the donation as a "Cash" gift type. Unfortunately, it's not possible to use the Split Gift feature to change gift types, so our gift processor manually splits the gift into two rows once it's downloaded into Batch. This way, the non-donation registration fee can be listed as "Other", which is a gift type we exclude from fundraising reports, but the donation income can still count as a "Cash" gift toward our fundraising goals. This way you can also apply the registration fee to the participant record in the event as a registration fee, and you can apply the cash gift as to the participant record in the event as an other donation. I hope that helps.

Michelle Grant · July 2016

Crystal George:

We are new to NetCommunity, only hosting events on the system for the last few months. We've noticed that all event registrations come through as "Gifts" and since we also support add-on donations while a user registers for an event we want to be able to separate this income by coding it as "Other" under "Gift Type" in the batch, instead of "Cash." We have it set as to "Other" as default, but changes in the batch.

Hi Crystal,

Michelle here with Blackbaud University! I would not suggest changing the Registration Fee payments to an 'Other' gift type - simply because the gift really is 'Cash'. The 'Cash' gift will be linked to the Event record as a Registration Fee payment, and you will be able to report on the income, separating it from other standard 'Cash' gifts. You certainly could, as others have mentioned, add an Appeal record to the gifts to help with using Appeal Reporting and easily filter in, or out, those Registration Fees by event if you'd like - this is a fairly common practice. However, I would consider leaving the the gift type as 'Cash' and using the other built in methods to separate your Registration Fee gifts. Also, donations that come in as an additional gift - beyond the registration fee itself - will be linked to the event as an 'Other' donation towards the event (still a 'Cash' gift type). They will not be linked as a Registration Fee payment. The additional donation will be listed as a seperate gift (depending on how you collect these additional donations towards the event) and will be linked as an 'Other' donation which can be filtered in or out of a report on the Event Income Report. To view how gifts can be linked differently - highlight the gift row in the batch - go to Gift on the menu, select Links, Event, then you will see both Registration Fees and Other Donations. (These options also exist during single gift entry).

Here are the steps to create an Event Income Report: https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/37428

That said, you can use the Global Change feature from within Batch to globally change all of the gift types to 'Other' after they have been loaded in from your NetCommunity plugin. To do this: Place your courser in the Type field on the first row of the batch - select Tools, then Global Change Type. Here you can select 'Other' as the new gift type and mark to override existing values.

Remember, I definitely encourage you to explore your other options for separating these Registration Fees from your cash donations using the methods mentioned above.

I hope you find this helpful!

Best,

Michelle Grant

Gina Gerhard · July 2016

For what it's worth I'll just throw this into the mix -- we do not book our event registrations as gifts at all. We do not consider an event registration as a gift.

When we accept the event registrations that come in through BBNC, we link them up to the records and create a gift batch.
We also export the transactions and produce a back-up file.
Our accounting department then pulls the amounts off of the gift batch but does NOT process the gift batch.
They then enter the event registration amounts elsewhere in our accounting system, and reconcile these amounts to the credit card information in BBMS.

On a constituent record, you can find the payments on the participant record for the event -- but not on their gifts tab.

Suzanne Murray 2 · August 2016

Gina Gerhard:

For what it's worth I'll just throw this into the mix -- we do not book our event registrations as gifts at all. We do not consider an event registration as a gift.

When we accept the event registrations that come in through BBNC, we link them up to the records and create a gift batch.

We also export the transactions and produce a back-up file.

Our accounting department then pulls the amounts off of the gift batch but does NOT process the gift batch.

They then enter the event registration amounts elsewhere in our accounting system, and reconcile these amounts to the credit card information in BBMS.
On a constituent record, you can find the payments on the participant record for the event -- but not on their gifts tab.

Hi Gina,

How does that work in terms of doing a profile of a donor? Or in terms of quickly seeing someone's giving? I see how this method works and avoids the confusion of it being tax deductible (or at least that's how I understood your use of "gift" as a term) or counting as straight philanthropy, but I'm wondering if that complicates things like tax statements, prospect research, and so on.

Thank you for your help!

Suzanne

Pat Morrison · August 2016

We process most but not all money coming in the door as a gift (things like electric bill refunds, reimbursements from non-constituents, etc. are not processed into RE). A lot of our events do have a tax deductible amount as the ticket price is larger than the value. This is especially true for event sponsorship gifts. We only use gifts for counting $$$$, have seen problems with trying to use events for tracking monies raised for an event. We use an attribute on the FUND table to identify which funds to pull for tax statements and which not to pull. We make sure that the receipt amount is correct when it should be lower than the gift amount.

Gina Gerhard · August 2016

Suzanne -

Our organization does not hold that many paid events, and we have detailed registration information in the events module that we can analyze. We know if they were invited, registered, paid, and attended so we could extrapolate that information if needed and combine with their actual donations.

Suzanne Murray 2 · August 2016

Thank you to both Gina and Pat for your helpful answers. We do not have many events either, so I'll keep your advice in mind as we get started with this.

Suzanne

Changing Gift Type to "Other" during Event Registration Batch

Comments

Categories