Hi all,
I've just started working for the Chicago Symphony and I'm looking for suggestions on dealing with patrons who pay their individual gifts through family foundations, but for all intents and purposes are recognized as individuals. (i.e. The personal check that comes with the "The XXX Family Foundation" and the address is either their home or business address.)
This stands in contrast to those patrons who want to receive "credit" for having suggested a gift from their donor-advised fund or a foundation for which they are a board member or trustee.
I've walked into a situation where there isn't a clear policy and I'd love to provide our gifts and records department with sound advice and some consistancy that is both logical and legal.
In addition, not having my own funds to start a family foundation, I'm not up-to-date on the fundamental differences between the types of foundations people can create. In past jobs, I've always been responsible for knowing how Tessitura works, but now, in my new job, I'm also responsible for knowing a little more about what the the legalalities require.
I'd love to just say that in all cases the money goes into the account where the money came from and soft credit the individual, but in an organization as large as this, I fear that could lead to soft credit hell, especially with these gifts that fall into this strange gray area.
Now that I've written a novel, this is what I'm looking for:
1) Are there any other large/medium sized organizations that have had this issue and have found a great way to categorize and deal with these accounts?
2) Do you receive any irritation from donors when they discover you have given their private foundation or fund its own account?
3) Is there really a shade of gray? I'd love to be directed to reading materials from the IRS or other sources on foundations, etc. that could help me with this.
Thanks for your help! I'd love to hear what you have to say.
Best wishes,Ryan Sedgwick
We also use the two account model. The real trick is to follow the tax credit. Does the individual take a tax credit when they put money into the charitable gift fund (i.e. you wouldn't send them a personal tax receipt) or do they just keep a separate account for giving and take a tax credit only when gifts are made (i.e. they would need a tax receipt to claim the credit.)
Since you don't always know how a donor's account is set up, another best practice is to always acknowledge that the gift was made thru "XYZ Family Foundation." This provides them adequate documentation under either senario.
We are in the position where we currently credit all DAF gifts to the individual account. While I'm interested in moving to the "two account model" for the sake of reporting and acknowledgment clarity, the rest of our Development staff isn't so sure how they feel about the change. They want, of course, to maintain the integrity of the donation history on the individuals' records.
I realize these aren't mutually exclusive goals, but for the sake of due diligence, is there anybody out there that uses the "one account model" (i.e. credits DAF and Family Foundation gifts to the individual donors' records, not to a seperate Fund or Foundation record) and is happy with it? If so, how do you get around tax-receipting issues, and the other issues reported above?
For those that use the "two account method", do you have a seperate constituency type for DAFs, as opposed to full-fledged Foundations?
Thanks!
Kirk Mortensen, TheatreWorks
We have a relatively small donor database and I confess to using both systems. If the gift is substantial then I do set up the second foundation account and soft credit the individual. But we have a good number of small gifts from DAFs and frankly it’s too much trouble to set up all those separate accounts AND make sure that the soft credits are showing up properly when we run donor lists. So I use the check description (the field in the window of Payment Method) to indicate a DAF gift and I also have a channel for DAF so I could run a list if I wished to (which I haven’t yet wished to do!). And because I do all the ack letters myself by exporting data that I then merge into Word letters, I can easily flag the DAF gifts and modify the letters individually. If I had more of these, I would probably still use the same system but set up a separate ack letter form and select that letter for DAF gifts.
I realize this would not work when you are processing hundreds of gifts at once. But it’s been fine for us.
_______________
Julie P. Hamre
Development Associate
Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc.
5301 Tuckerman Lane
North Bethesda, MD 20852-3385
301.581.5136; fax 301.581.5201
www.strathmore.org
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-----Original Message----- From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Kirk Mortensen Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 11:32 AM To: Julie Hamre Subject: Re: [Tessitura Development Forum] Family Foundations We are in the position where we currently credit all DAF gifts to the individual account. While I'm interested in moving to the "two account model" for the sake of reporting and acknowledgment clarity, the rest of our Development staff isn't so sure how they feel about the change. They want, of course, to maintain the integrity of the donation history on the individuals' records. I realize these aren't mutually exclusive goals, but for the sake of due diligence, is there anybody out there that uses the "one account model" (i.e. credits DAF and Family Foundation gifts to the individual donors' records, not to a seperate Fund or Foundation record) and is happy with it? If so, how do you get around tax-receipting issues, and the other issues reported above? For those that use the "two account method", do you have a seperate constituency type for DAFs, as opposed to full-fledged Foundations? Thanks! Kirk Mortensen, TheatreWorks From: Sadie Treese <bounce-sadietreese3511@tessituranetwork.com> Sent: 4/9/2009 1:14:29 PM We also use the two account model. The real trick is to follow the tax credit. Does the individual take a tax credit when they put money into the charitable gift fund (i.e. you wouldn't send them a personal tax receipt) or do they just keep a separate account for giving and take a tax credit only when gifts are made (i.e. they would need a tax receipt to claim the credit.) Since you don't always know how a donor's account is set up, another best practice is to always acknowledge that the gift was made thru "XYZ Family Foundation." This provides them adequate documentation under either senario. This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums.
From: Sadie Treese <bounce-sadietreese3511@tessituranetwork.com> Sent: 4/9/2009 1:14:29 PM
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