OK - I remember another reason I do it the way I do - We get donations from more than one United Way Chapter - and the soft credits tie them to their specific United Way. I do like your solution and may look at something like that going forward

I do wish that the other gift could be better tied to the gift on the UW record but because of the limitations of soft credits we chose this route.  We use relationships  to knwo which UW they give through. We also put it in the reference and drop the reference field into the acknowledgement.

Hello,

Last year I attended a seminar with two United Way Representatives and had a local UW rep call me directly because I was originally receipting for amount received.  Since I entered into the non-profit arena in 2006, I was not aware that it was incorrect of me to offer a receipt for UW payments.  This seemed to annoy the donors - some of which had no idea that the UW was deducting fees - therefore they contacted the UW directly to complain - prompting my call from the UW.  According to my conversation with UW, they are the first receipient of the donation, therefore it is their obligation to issue all receipts to the donor for their donation amounts.  I am ONLY to thank them yearly for their pledged amount.  If the donors did not supply their information for an acknowledgement, then nothing is sent.  I think it would be extremely cumbersome to send a thank you for each donation received, since some are ridiculously low and even the cost of a postage stamp is more than a donation.

Jennifer 

What we do is hard credit the speicif United Way that sent us the check (we work with roughly 20 UWs), we then SC the individual so that when we look at their giving history we are able to establish how much they have given to us.  We only acknowledge the gift as a pledge & we send an acknowledgement letter to the UW thanking them.  Occasionally in the past pledges were booked for the full amount without taking into consideration the fees, in these rare cases, we use the documentation provided by the UW that shows their admin. fees as supporting documentation to prove the donor fulfilled their entire pledge and expense any remainder.

Hi Megan,

 I agree with you, sometimes we have no way of knowing that the $$ is coming or from whom, so you can not soft credit any constituents.

If I receive a report from them of the pledges and so on, I go ahead and enter the pledge in my system, so when I run my monthly reports, I know the $$ is coming, later I reported as cash flow.

Thanks for sharing this,

 Monica Biondo

Avow Hospice