• Much more scrutiny from external organizations such as Revenue Agencies. We have to be more accurate and adhere to more rules and regulations. The rules and regulations are increasingly complex to learn and to administer.
  
  
• Donors have taken much more direct control of their philanthropy. We need to be much more careful in how we record gifts and then how we manage them once they have been received.
  
  
• More complicated giving vehicles and more complex recognition and maintenance activities such as family foundations are becom ... Read More »

To a large part, the use of students for all sorts of data entry tasks can be substantially driven by budgetary resources and to some extent the political realities of an organization's budget process.

Many of us have worked/work in environments where there are simply not have enough staff to enter gifts and we are not able to increase the number of full time positions. Using students may be the only way we can manage. Alternatives might be to distribute bio and gift entry all over campus which would be more difficult to control.

With the proper training, student employees can easily achieve the same levels of accuracy as full time staff. You can also split the levels of donations into tiers and have stronger and compensating control mechanisms for major gifts or special donors. The same can be said for managing volunteers for these types of tasks, but volunteer management often takes more time in terms of recruitment an ... Read More »

First off, there can be lots of legal requirements/restrictions related to raffles, often at the local, state, and federal levels. There's a useful discussion at:

http://www.sumptionandwyland.com/faq/FAQ-Raffles-Charitable-Lotteries.htm

There are, in particular, apparently restrictions prohibiting sending lottery tickets through the mail; see: http://pe.usps.com/text/CSR/PS-307.htm

One local organization was planning on doing a charitable raffle, but decided not to because of registration and licensing regulations and related requirements.
Read More »

Paul English, a software developer got so fed up with voice mail that he set up his own web site to help circumvent some popular voice mail menu systems.

http://www.paulenglish.com/ivr/

Something to think about … Most people would rather speak to a live person. It’s good to review how you handle direct customer service interactions within your shop.

• Do you have multiple 800 and other office numbers that could be consolidated?
• If you have menu paths for your phones are there always options to be able to talk to real people?
• When is your switchboard staffed? Does the schedule work with constituents in other time zones?
&b ... Read More »

Most donors have moved beyond sending cash: Security, no frequent flyer points, hard to trace. However you may still get some now and then. ($5,000 in $50 dollar bills!)

What holds true in the past for cash transactions, also holds true today.

- Make sure you have rock solid control procedures in place so cash donations are not misappropriated.
- In the case of larger cash donations, ensure that the money is not counterfeit. You may also want to try and find out a little more information on the donor if you don't know them well.
- There may be legislation in place for larger transaction amounts, particulary cross border or foreign currency. Be aware before you process.
- You may want to think about the need to re-educate your donor on the desireabilty of using other vehicles.

The punch line ... ... Read More »

With the advent of blogs and the ability to generate a wide variety of feeds to a blog or web site, has anyone thought about the idea of creating a "daily gift blog?"

The daily gift blog could be created by running a sql query that simply generates a formatted xml file that would feed a blog with gifts entered and processsed in the system.

if you were to include a category such as an organization unit like a college, visiters to the blog could just click and see the gifts to their area.

A daily gift blog also has other benefits ... If you could also integrate the gifts into a prospect research blog, you would have a complete system for distributing information to all of your key development staff, and thus easily creating an internal news site for all gift and prospecting activity. Plus, staff could make comments, ... Read More »

Do you ever run into this situation? You get a gift -- cash, check, or charge -- from one donor, who then tells you that it's really from several different people, and the one donor is just passing it along on behalf of all of them? So who gets the receipt(s)?

The short version

Gay Donohoo, of Texas Christian University, asked the IRS this very question, and was nice enough to share the answer that she got. It said, in part:

Based on the scenario provided, if the credit card that was used is in the name of one individual, and if it is equal to or greater than $250.00, the acknowledgement that you would send would only include the individual taxpayer s name. For a taxpayer to claim a charitable contribution on their tax return, they would need to contribute directly to the organization so that ... Read More »

As we get into our busy season it's time to think about your transactional volumes and their impact on staff.

Tis the season where it's easy to get behind as we process gifts and update records as donors send in their gifts to qualify for year end tax receipts.

With many areas of campus closed for the holidays, checks may sit in desks until after the new year, normal procedures break down and other problems can occur.

With all of this in mind:

1. Send a memo out to all staff letting them know what year end procedures are in place and the importance of adhering to them. Get volunteers for overtime and coverage in advance.

2. Make sure everyone understands the idea of "evidence of delivery" i.e. Keeping copies of envelopes and anything else coming in from do ... Read More »

We're into the busy fall season. Lots of gifts with telefund program so lots of updates, reports, etc.

We've had to design a few forms lately, so here's some links with forms you may find useful,

http://www.lawdepot.com. LawDepot. Automated legal forms.
http://office.microsoft.com/. Microsoft Office - Form design templates.
http://nationalserviceresources.org/. National Service Resource Center - Under the online resources tab.
http://www.miami.edu/advancement/forms/ University of Miami Advancement Services Page