Someone walked into the Hospice office and gave $40 cash in memory of John Doe.  I have everything about this gift except the name and address of the person who walked in.   Do you create a record just for all anonymous donors and what do you call it? Last name...Anonymous, first name...Friend for reporting purposes? Or do you call it Misc Cash?  I know about the gives anonymously box and the one in the Gift tab and the uncheck of the send mail to this person but as far as the record itself, what is the best practice for this?  suzo

We use an 'Organization' record called "Anonymous Donor" and we use it for all donations where we don't know the donor name.  It has always worked for us and I've used it so much that I have the ID number memorized. 

We actually have both and individual Anonymous Donor (AD) and an Individual Misc. Cash.  I use the AD for any gift that we have not name for.  I just had one from or Online donations that went there.  I use the Misc. Cash for any true cash that we really can't track a source, such as a raffle, reverse raffle, where tickets are sold without keeping track of the buyer. That keeps the type of gift seperate.  As you know your gift is from one donor it would go in the AD file.

I actually prefer to use a record under the name Unknown donor rather than anonymous.  Because anonymous is used elsewhere to denote known donors who wish not to be recognized I was always getting questions about "shouldn't this anonymous gift go on the anonymous donor record".  So changing the name to Unknown Donor cut down the number of times that came up and it was only used when you put out a jar at a fair and collected donations or the situation you mentioned. 

I actually also had an Unknown Stock Donor record simply for a holding place for stock gifts that came in that were in the process of being identified.

We actually do the same thing Donor Unknown put we put both cash gifts and stock gifts in the same record. It saves the confusion of anonymous donor like Melissa said.

Hi Melissa, after your msg, we have decided to use your method of Unknown Donor and use Anonymous Friend for our particular known major donor.  We are a small organization and think that this will work well for us.  Thank you so much, suzo

PS  Thank you all for your quick responses!

If you know the name of your "anonymous friend" why are you calling the record Anonymous Friend?  There are plenty of ways to make sure that anyone who requests anonymity does not have their name publicly listed but this is typically overkill. 

• You can check the anonymous checkbox. 
• You can use a recognition listing addressee/salutation and enter Anonymous. 
• You can use a pop up notation to warn users who open the record of the anonymity and
• You can even limit access to that record using security by cons code so only one or 2 users can even see the record.

Disconnecting the true name of a donor from their electronic record has long term consequences (you and your entire development staff die in a plane crash on the way back from a retreat!) and you might need to check with your auditors if they even want you using this type of record name.

Suzo,

We have an individual record named "Anonymous." All gifts that come in from donors who don't give any information about them (including their name) we put in this record. We know that all gifts in this file are from an "Unknown" donor.

Hope this helps!