Employee Stickers... enter as gifts or no?

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Julie Hiland
Julie Hiland
Ancient Membership 10 Comments Name Dropper Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
I work for a large healthcare organization that has a year-round "Count Me In" employee campaign. Most of the contributions come in the way of voluntary payroll deductions that are deducted autumatically throughout the year. However, we also have a Casual for a Cause portion of the campaign, whereby employees can pay $3 to wear a sticker that allows them to dress down the first Friday of the month.  We also have a Pink for a Cause portion of the campaign, whereby empoyees can pay $1 to wear a sticker that allows them to wear pink on Fridays during the month of October (Breast Cance Awareness Month).  When they purchase their stickers, they provide us with their name and employee number.



Two questions:

1) Are these tax deductible contributions?

2) Regardless of the answer above, what are the advantages and disadvantages of entering these onto individual employee records in RE?  Our sustained giving director has requested it, for the purpose of tracking employee engagement (percent of employees giving).  But obviously, there's the element of data entry time!  We have ImportOmatic, which I'm sure can help (I'm still new at it), but it's still a lot of work for not much benefit other than tracking participation. Advice? Solutions?



Thanks!
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  • John Heizer
    John Heizer
    Ancient Membership 500 Likes 500 Comments Photogenic
    Yeah, this sounds like it could be a huge task.  I can see some value in having this additional data give a better picture of total employee engagement, but if you're already short-staffed (as most of us are) then your organization (i.e. the director) needs to weigh the cost versus benefit.  How many participated in the last campaign?  Can you do an estimate of how much time it will take to enter the data and let the director know that you'll need X number of hours from staff/volunteer/temp to get the data into RE.



    Do the employees have an ID card with a scannable barcoded version of the employee ID number?  Scanning that (even just into a Word document) at the time of sale could reduce a huge amount of manual data entry.  You'd still have to find a way to tie that ID to their record in RE.  One thing to look into is manually changing each employee's Constituent ID to be a version of their employee ID number:  E-1234567.  On second thought, 1234567-E might be better.  Try a few test records to see how it affects lookups and RE's automatic ID incremental assignments.



    Are they tax deductible?  Probably, but I make it a rule to NEVER advise ANYONE on that issue, not even fellow development staff members on what our donor's tax deductibility might be.  That is between the donor and the IRS and I don't want to get caught up in that battle if there is ever a dispute.  I'll gladly talk about the value of any benefits the donor might receive in return for their donation, but I never use language that says how much is tax deductible.  Does the stickers have quid pro quo value that the donor would need to factor in?  Possibly so, depending on a number of variables (are there other ways an employee might otherwise purchase the benefit they get in return for the donation?).  But, all that said, I doubt that either the employee or the IRS would care one way or the other.  The donation is under $250 so you're not required to provide a receipt and I doubt that even the most miserly donor would bother to track the donation (do some of them write a check for it?).
  • Jen Claudy
    Jen Claudy
    Tenth Anniversary 1,500 Likes 1000 Comments Name Dropper
    Adding to what John said (sorry, it's lengthier than I intended...)



    There are other threads out there regarding tracking other ID numbers, and many have opted to use an Alias for this.  You could also duplicate the entry in the Maiden Name field (which we have relabeled as "Other Names") so that it's visible on Bio1.  Alias is searchable and is a viable option if you can't, for whatever reason, edit the Constituent IDs as John suggested.  If you can't edit ConstID because you don't want to lose the existing number, you can append the Employee ID as: ConstID-EEmpID (so if the ConstID is currently 123 and the EmpID is 789, the new ConstID would be 123-E789).



    As for advising on tax deductible status...I always advocate for advising that the donor consult their tax professional.  This is the language we currently use in our acknowledgement letters: "No goods or services were provided in exchange for this gift. This gift is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Please consult your tax professional on the deductibility of your charitable gifts."  If we had a FMV (fair market value) to report, we would say "Goods and services with a fair market value of $X were provided in exchange for this gift.  This gift is tax-deductible..." and leave it to the donor to do the math.  The biggest thing with telling a donor how much they can write off (even, or maybe especially, "This gift is fully tax deductible.") is that you don't know what their personal situation is...and you are potentially headed into a dangerous situation that you can easily avoid.



    In this particular situation, (the stickers) I wouldn't provide acknowledgement letters at all.  Maybe (upon request) an email or letter at the end of the year providing a sum total.  If someone wants to deduct this on their taxes, they should write a check, which can then be used as their receipt.  Or they should request a written receipt from the person they buy the sticker from, at the time of purchase.



    You could even do one gift per employee at the end of the CY or FY (or both) with the total given for that timeframe.  This might cut down on the amount of data entry.  I do this with our staff who donate to United Way.  If they give $1 per paycheck for 26 pay periods to UW, I enter one gift in RE for $26, under the date for the last pay period of the CY and using a specific Campaign/Campaign Category that automatically excludes those gifts from all reports and giving lists.  In your case, I would keep an Excel spreadsheet for the year (on the Media Tab of a dummy record in RE so you, your data entry staff, and your Sustained Giving Director can all access it) and then enter the totals as gifts at the end of the year.  The Excel document could contain both the RE ConstID and the EmployeeID, so adding to Excel would use the EmpID and entering in RE would use the ConstID.

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