When we get a check from organizations like Network for Good, it will be accompanied by several names of individuals who have given and maybe some anonymous donors also. The names will usually have amounts with them, but since the third party organization sometimes keeps a portion of the donation we don't actually receive the amount stated.

The donor is entitled to recognition for the entire amount, however, we reconcile with our finance department and so we can't enter the total amount of the gift.  

 How do others handle these types of gifts.

Quoting myself from a recent response to the same question :) 

I think the questions here are the legality of the donation and who to receipt and the dollar amount to use. NFG donations are like United Way donations in that the money we receive from them needs to be receipted to NFG & United Way and cannot be receipted from us even though we think of the individuals that made the donations to NFG & UW as 'our donors'.

NFG is not a bank or a credit card processor - they are a stand alone Charity. The 2 ways I have seen this handled are:

John Smith donates $30 online via credit card to NFG and designates the money to go to your organization. NFG sends the donor their legal receipt. NFG sends you a check for $25 and indicates John Smith in the memo of the check.

NFG is the legal donor and receives the receipt from your organization.

Example 1: $25 is put on the NFG constituent record (legal donor) and John Smith is soft credited $25

Example 2: $25 is put on the NFG constituent record (legal donor). A second Gift for $30 is put on John Smith's account using the Gift type of OTHER. Other gifts are excluded from all financial reporting - and the thank you letter sent does not mention the dollar amount because they are not the legal donor - just like a soft credit.

I guess what this really means is that the person your organization considers the donor (not NFG) in their solicitation mind set should never see a dollar amount on their thank you letter because they are not legally the donor to your organization. What should happen is that you have a recognition policy that is robust and flexible enough to reward donors that donate through organizations like these but may miss a giving level recognitiopn by a few dollars due to fees being collected from organizations like these.

- the value of the donation made by the original donor (from above, $25)

- a "Donation Through Third Party" attribute (the description is a drop-down menu of 3rd party orgs.)

- an attribute "Third Party Fees" (the description is the fee amount; from above, $5), and

- is marked "Do Not Receipt".

We use a specific batch for donations made through third parties, so neither attribute or receipt setting will be missed. Also, our receipting queries double-check for gifts with the "Third Party" attribute.

Handling it this way allows us to pull lists of donors and not include the intermediaries, and we can get the total donated, by donor.

At posting, a list of all the gifts with the "Third Party Fees" attributes (and the $ amount in the description) is exported into Excel for reconciliation.

I do not recommend putting gifts on the record of anyone but the legal donor. NFG is a charity, not a credit card processor, therefore they are processing a donor advised gift to you and should be hard credited for the gift. Just like United Way.

I prefer the second method that Laurel mentions because it allows for you to "credit" the individual for recognition purposes without it looking improperly like it was a legal gift and you properly have the legal gift in the system under the legal donor's record. I would prefer just to soft credit but RE does not allow you to SC for more than the HC.