We are running a brick campaign for our new building.  I have gotten a gift for a brick in honor of a person.  The donation is $150 but given by 4 checks from 4 different people and some cash.  Any suggestions on how in the world to enter that? Usually, I just enter the name of the person that gave the donation as the constituent and add that the gift is in honor of another person.

If you have 4 checks you have 4 separate gifts.  A brick (presuming the brick is not given to the donor but rather placed somewhere on site) is not a technical benefit to the donor so they each get full tax deductibility for the amount they gave (presuming you give no other benefits).  therefore they each need their checks recorded on their own record and each get their own receipt.

If you are using the tribute module to record your bricks it may be somewhat confusing (not that any other system would be less confusing).  You will need to have some sort of notation that these 4 gifts equal one brick not 4.  I can't think of a simple way to do it you may need to be creative with notes, etc. and possibly simply keep a god memory of this exception to the norm.

Mellisa,

Thanks so much for your input.  Maybe you could help me with something else.  I didn't want to complicate things so I left out that 1/3 of the brick was purchased with cash and I have no name as to who gave the cash.  I suppose I could put in a constituent with the name of anonymous.  What is your thought on that?

Just to clarify; there was 1 brick purchased with 4 checks and 1 cash payment, given all togther for a brick in honor of an individual.  The four checks of course have names.  The cash gift was given with no name.

I suppose another option would be to put the brick in the name of the person being honored.  THis is actually a purchase so it is not a tax deductable donation.  Have I thoroughly confused you now?

Thanks again for your help.

June

A) yes you would put the cash on a new record but I would not recommend calling it anonymous.  Users then get confused between that record and a known donor who simply says list me as anonymous or I am making this gift anonymously.  I recommend a record called unknown donor to be clear that you do not know the name of the donor at all.

B) It is completely a tax deductible transaction.  There is no purchase at all unless you are giving them the brick to keep for themselves.  If you are keeping the brick and installing it on your property - what have they purchased?  They have no ownership of anything - therefore no purchase.  It is not even a benefit for IRS purposes so it is not even a quid pro quo situation (where it is tax deductible minus the benefits) because, again, the donors received nothing of value in this situation.  The gifts should be on their personal records and they should be receipted for their tax deductible gift.