I am having a hard time trying to figure out how to post or if I should post these united way gifts - help if you can.

We have Financial Edge and normally I post United Way gifts into Raiser's Edge, soft crediting the donor.  We have one United Way agency that does not go through RE but is posted directly in Accounts Receivable.  However, yesterday I received a report from this United Way with a list of donor allocations made to our agency- it is important to note  these designations are incorporated into our United Way allocation and are not funds we will receive above our reported allocation.  Also this report is basically what has been pledged by the donor - we will never know if they have fulfilled their pledge.  Last year we used a spread sheet and merge to thank the donors, there was never a link to RE so by looking at the donors record you would not know they made a gift - so they may not be receiving our newsletters or major donor invites and so on.  Please tell me your thoughts about how to handle this situation.  Thanks, I appreciate any suggestions.

Margaret Wagstaff

After talking it over for a couple of months, we just sorted out our United Way contributions the opposite way from your organization.  Since these are payroll deductions, we feel they belong on the donor's records.  We soft credit United Way, recognizing that we very well might not receive these donations without them.  For those who donate anonymously, we have a dummy constituent called Anonymous - we put the donation there and again soft credit United Way.  We ignore the pledges for donors reported by United Way as they can cease at any time and we do not want to count on them.  Instead, we go by the check we receive and the report that accompanies it.  We also have an attribute which cues us to send United Way donors a year-end annual giving summary and thank you letter, as our United Way donors have indicated they do not want thank you letters throughout the year.  The way we are handling this seems to be working.

There have been many discussions in the forums on how to enter United Way/Donor designated gifts into RE.  You might search the archives.  However, the donors did not actually donate to your organization and should not receive hard credit.  Your orginazation is not the charity, United Way is.  Then, because of the donor designations, United Way donates money to your organization. The donors tax letter comes from United Way. You only need to thank them for thinking of you when making their United Way gift and designating the funds to you.  A once a year letter is great. 

While they are payroll deductions they are gifts from the individual to United Way not to you.  You absolutely in no instance I am ever aware of should enter these as gifts from the individual and if you receipt these gifts as such, my understanding is that they are considered fraudulent tax documents subject to a fine from the IRS and if maliciously done you could lose your 501 c 3 status.

The individuals gave to United Way and United Way agreed to send a gift to you.  This is the way the IRS sees it and therefore so should your organization.  United Way gets the hard credit and the receipt (unless they request not to get one) and the individuals technically need nothing from you but you will likely want to recognize them in some way.

The two most common ways to make sure they are recognized is by soft crediting or by adding a gift type of Other.  I have described this before several times in previous posts and I also suggest searching Knowledgebase as there once was a very good write up on United Way gifts and these 2 recognition options.  I prefer the Other gift method for many reasons I have described before.

Hi Melissa - I want into the archives and I found your post explaining how you use the gift type "other".  I like that idea, as in my case with this one particular United Way - the 32,000 on the report is built into the large allocation we get from them that goes through accounts receivable. That soves my problem of being able to properly recognize a donor.  My questions is - I don't know if you have the Financial Edge but will I need to mark those gifts as do not post?

I appreciate your thoughts.

Margaret

I do not have FE but if posting is done on all gifts then marked not posted then yes - if you can do it using a query of only certain gift types you could maybe use a query that excludes other.

Also, just because it goes through AR does not mean it is not a gift and should not go in RE.  I would request something from AR that tells you each time a payment comes so you can enter the gift.  I would just immediately mark it as Posted so it does not go through in posting but will match to finance reports since they already have the info and posted it for you.

Melissa, I belive what you're saying is absolutely correct - the indivdual's tax letter should reflect that they designated us when giving to United Way. After all, the donor has already recieved a tax-letter from United Way themselves.

So the gift goes into the United Way record, and soft-credits the actual donor.

David,  I am going to correct you only on one point.  The individual should not be receiving anything you call a "tax-letter" from your organization at all.  If you mean "thank you letter" then I agree for the reason you stated - they already received a tax-letter from United Way.