What should the gift amount be?

Maya Rabinovitch · June 2018

If we receive donations through our central office and only a percentage of the donations come to us, how should those be entered?

For example, if someone gives $100 and on 65% of that donation comes to us, how should the gift we enter that? Should a $100 gift be entered as $100 or $65? If $65, should we have an attribute or something for the full amount?

JoAnn Strommen · June 2018

Maya, where does the other 35% go? Are you receipting the donor? For financial reports that you run what amount would you want on the reports? What answer is to those questions would be a factor to me in what amount to enter. You also have the gift amount and receipt amount fields to consider.

Maya Rabinovitch · June 2018

JoAnn Strommen:

Maya, where does the other 35% go? Are you receipting the donor? For financial reports that you run what amount would you want on the reports? What answer is to those questions would be a factor to me in what amount to enter. You also have the gift amount and receipt amount fields to consider.

Thanks for helping out, JoAnn! The gifts are all receipted by the central office. For financial reports we'd only want to show the actual amount that came to us (the $65 in my example). For fundraising and recognition reports we'd want to show the actual amount from the donor's perspective ($100).

JoAnn Strommen · June 2018

I'm generally about the easiest way to do things. So I think I would consider receipt amount and gift amount if that doesn't conflict with any other benefit/gift things you have going. My thought process is that it's on the same screen, can easily be done in batch, and can pull for most reports (check to see if both fields are available for your purposes) and most importantly you would not have to add attributes to all the gifts. I'm assuming that you have other gifts that are 100% yours. To have to add an attribute for those would be extra work in my mind. If all your gifts are only part of total, it would be easier to justify need for an attribute.

Just one opinion.

Alan French · June 2018

Would a split gift work, if you put 65% against your fund and the remaining 35% to a "central office" fund? Then you could choose not to include that fund in your financial reports but the full amount would show on the donor's record.

Lee Newcomb · June 2018

My org. had a 'policy' setup for this, trying to focus on the reports & the donor acknowledgements (_never_ been officially reviewed, so there's probably a better way).

If the donor has paid fees that come out of their donation (e.g., United Way, Network for Good [NFG]), we record the donation (e.g., $50) and split it; e.g.,:

    Appeal   Package   Amount

    Contrib   NFG        $48.50

    ProcFee NFG          $1.50

The donor gets thanked for their $50 & the finance report shows the processing expense.

But some donation systems (e.g., NFG) allow donors to pay the processing fee themselves. If we see this (not all online donation systems show this) but technically it was not a donation to us, the donation (e.g., $50) is recorded with note in the gift's reference field that adds "via Network for Good (along with $1.50 fees you paid on our behalf)" to the acknowledgement letter (started about 2 yrs. ago when a donor had an issue with the IRS over our thank you letters...I have not had time to research this). [Currently use spreadsheet functions to generate the NFG donation imports to handle the donor or us paying the fee...need to code it if time ever permits.]

Basically, this came from discussions with the Exec. Dir. & Finance mgrs. a few years ago & has been working for NSKS. As with many parts of the database processing, find out what is best for your organization & donors. Make the results a standard for all of your RE users & document it.

What should the gift amount be?

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