Processing registration fees as gifts

Hi Mary Beth,

We enter our event registration fees as gifts, but will reduce the receipt amount so that the portion that is above the calculated expense per person is the gift. For example, if it's determined that the food, beverage, and entertainment will cost us $10 per person and the entry fee that had been decided on during planning was $25, then the receipt amount would be $15. The $15 is what they can claim on their taxes.



Most of our paid registrations still come in through the mail. So, entering the fees through gift batch also facilitates reporting to finance for our deposits and entry to the general ledger.



Our orgainzation also utilizes NetCommunity for online registrations and those download into gift batch, so it would not make sense for us to only have online registration fees entered through gift batch.







 

We haven't had the fee match the expenses. And now, you've peaked my curiosity on how others are handling event fees.



All I can offer on this, is how we have looked at the event fees vs expenses:

We have looked at it as being no different than when a donor receives a more expensive mail piece, like a calendar or a newsletter and they send in a dollar and a prayer request in response. They were touched by the piece enough to respond, but the gift doesn't cover the expense of mailing, or even sending a thank you letter, to them. We count the donation, and know that we are blessed to receive what the donor feels they can give. But, I work for a religious order, which means our operating parameters can be very different from that of other organizations.



Thank you for asking this question! I look forward to hearing from others who may handle more events (with fees) than our organization does.









 

I just realized it might not make sense to somebody else why we post the way we do. Sorry! - let me clarify. Our philosophy is that with fundraising events, people who attend fundraising events are only attending because they want to help financially support your cause. So, their gift amount does reflect on their charitable inclinations to your organization. The non-deductible portion also is generally less than half the amount of the registration fee, so MOST of the check amount is tax-deductible, for ALL attendees.



In your example of an event fee of $1200 that barely covers expenses/goods received, this is also clearly not a "fundraising" event, but rather a paid service or PR event that you are facilitating. Much like our Alumni Reunion or Retreat Center, the numer of people who donate is relatively small, and there may be another department besides Development involved in facilitating the event as part of their normal revenue-generating services. This is why we split the check value between the donation amount and the amount of the event registration in these cases, and only post the amount of donation. At least, that is what our former Associate Director explained to me, and she ran a CPA/tax-preparer business in her "spare" time.



Hope this helps you out. I'm sure your situation will be unique, but hope you figure something out!

I like what everyone is saying here on this topic.



Our office's event fees usually have a tax-deductible portion, and so we'll enter a gift in RE and the receipt amount will only be the tax deduction for the donor.

 

We created a  FUND record for events (ex: "Special Events - Reunion") and route registration fees to that fund.

With that structure we can easily include/exclude by fund for queries, exports and reports