coding vendors at an event

Nicole S · August 2015

(super annoyed right now because I typed all this up and BB lost my post...

retyping...)

I am still kind of new to this organization and I am trying to figure out the best way to code vendors who come to our events we have 3 scenarios:

An event that sowcases resturaunts in the area. A couple dozen participate. They come, set up a table and distribute small servings of their dishes to ticket buyers. They don't pay us and we don't pay them.
A seated dinner with a theme. Different designeres and florists come and each decorate a table setting based on the theme. They don't pay us and we don't pay them.
A famly fair where local nonprofit orgs can have a booth where they have activities for kids and distribute info to families. Corporate sponsors can also pay to have a booth. We do pay some entertainers.

In the past, they have entered all of this in RE as GIK. We have the events module and my instinct is that all of these should go on the event at vendors. I can use that tab to assign their booths and tables. Any sponsors, of course, would also be entered as gifts and linked to the event. I think that a lack of training has kept them from using and fully understanding how using the module can help.

I am sure some of you have similar events. Am I forgetting something? Is there anything else to consider? Are you entering these another way that you're willing to share?

John Heizer · August 2015

Sounds like you are on the right track 100% (except #3 doesn't look like a GIK, unless you'd actually pay orgs to parcipate) , although you might want to set up a separate Campaign/Fund for such gifts.

We only book GIK donations that we would have budgeted/paid for and therefor have an expense budget line to offset the income of the gift. So, things like items that are donated to be auctioned do get booked in RE, but with a special Campaign that is "off-books" and not reported as revenue, since we wouldn't have purchased that item for our operations. The income from the winning bid of the auction item is booked as revenue. That way we are able to see a donor's full relationship with us, but don't double-count the money (GIK + cash) from the auction item. A party planning company that gives us a deep discount on their services for the event does get booked as a "normal" GIK because we would have paid for such service and it has an expense built into our budget.

"Use the power of the force RE, Luke."

Nicole S · August 2015

I want to make sure I link them to the event for sure. The vendors we pay would not have a gift in RE at all [#3 includes people who come for free (voluneers/GIK), people who pay (sponsors), and people we pay (vendors)]. Are you saying that you would still put the GIK on the records in addition to the event participation? I guess it makes sense to do both. Or do you think it falls under "volunteer"? Or both? I ask because we also have the voluneer module. Just trying to work through the details here and these are new events for me. Thanks.

John Heizer · August 2015

Nicole San Miguel:

I want to make sure I link them to the event for sure. The vendors we pay would not have a gift in RE at all [#3 includes people who come for free (voluneers/GIK), people who pay (sponsors), and people we pay (vendors)]. Are you saying that you would still put the GIK on the records in addition to the event participation? I guess it makes sense to do both. Or do you think it falls under "volunteer"? Or both? I ask because we also have the voluneer module. Just trying to work through the details here and these are new events for me. Thanks.

I don't currently have the Volunteer module and haven't used it in ages, so I can't remember how well it ties to Event records, so I can't help you much there.

Yes, I'd enter a GIK for anyone you are getting something of value from. How to enter it would depend on what your organization considers a GIK that goes "on the books." We don't put things "on the books" unless it is something we would have budgeted for/spent money on.

Even though you may not have "expenses" associated with many of these folks I can see where flagging them as "Vendors" and having their assigned space/table could be helpful to set up the event (although I don't see any standard Reports that might give you that information easily).

Nicole S · August 2015

Oh yeah! I almost forgot. For the resturaunts, they are not actually "donating" anything. Technically this is an event that we have in partnership with a corporation. Legally, it's the corp's event, but we get the proceeds. We do secure sponsors, and those gifts are donations like most other event sponsorsips. But ticket sales and etc. are not. We do not even process payments. I suppose the resuraunts that come are also not really volunteering anything nor are they donating anything. But we still want to keep track of them and anyone else linked to the event. So I think it would be improper to call this a GIK at all.

Christine Cooke 2 · August 2015

Nicole -- technically they are donating their time and food. Yes, they are getting publicity in return just like someone who would place an ad in your event program/catalog, if you had one.

My two cents goes along the line of John in that you should be record GIK as defined by your org in the gift module. And those orgs should be Vendors as a constit code. And in the Event module there is not reason not to record them there so that you can keep track of who and where everyone will be. If they have a GIK, that can be linked to the Event. Then everything is covered yes?

John Heizer · August 2015

Nicole San Miguel:

Oh yeah! I almost forgot. For the resturaunts, they are not actually "donating" anything. Technically this is an event that we have in partnership with a corporation. Legally, it's the corp's event, but we get the proceeds. We do secure sponsors, and those gifts are donations like most other event sponsorsips. But ticket sales and etc. are not. We do not even process payments. I suppose the resuraunts that come are also not really volunteering anything nor are they donating anything. But we still want to keep track of them and anyone else linked to the event. So I think it would be improper to call this a GIK at all.

This sounds really tricky and I'm sure I'm over-thinking it now (going beyond your original question). I'd have all kinds of concerns about which legal entity is giving what to whom and the IRS ramifications of all this complexity. If the sponsorships have a fair market value is your organization providing that value or is the corporation producing the event providing it? How does that affect tax deductibility? What sort of tax receipting are you providing to the producing corporation?

It sounds like much of what you're doing we would not consider a true GIK because it wouldn't have a related/balancing expense associated with it, but you'd still want to have a record of their participation and asign a value to that participation for stewardship purposes. I'd also want as much information as possible if in the future you needed to produce the event yourselves. As I've said before, we track that with a Campaign that is excluded from financial reports and the "gift" can still be associated with the Event for reporting.

Nicole S · August 2015

I suppose that what I mean is, they aren't donating it to US. The event is not ours. As in we do not run it, we do not use our 501c3 in any way. We do not secure the venue or liquor license. We do not pick out the decorations. We do not process the money that is paid by the sponsors we do not secure or the ticket purchasers. This event does not accept donations in lieu of attendance. It is an event held by a corporation (a media company, so this is similar to advertising) who then donates the procedes to us. They are working with the corp. It's almost a very grand bake sale held by another group and they give us the money that's left after paying for the muffins.

If we were running the event, I would definitely agree that they are donating time and food. Of course, I could be operating under the wrong instructions, so if anyone can point me to something that says otherwise, I'd be happy to approach our DD and finance.

The sponsorships are also tricky. Our org can make an agreement with a sponsor and that is a donation. But some sponsors go through the corp. That money is not a donation. It goes into the corp pot that we later get a donation from. I suppose that this logic is also what gets me to the conclusion that the resturaunts are also not donating.

coding vendors at an event

Comments

Categories