'TIS THE SEASON TO BE GIVING: NONPROFIT CHARITABLE GIVING CONTRIBUTIONS AND MORE

‘TIS THE SEASON TO BE GIVING:
NONPROFIT CHARITABLE GIVING CONTRIBUTIONS & MORE
by Pam Ashlund

Collecting donations for your nonprofit? As a financial manager (and those that imagine incorrectly that I’m a tax accountant or a CPA) I can’t tell you how often I’m asked about documentation for donors. Some want to know about receipts for cash gifts, the others how to value an in-kind gift. The first has concrete answers, the second has a few gray areas. But for all answers it’s one-stop shopping and must come from one source and only one source: the IRS.

So what follows are quotes from the IRS site, and links to the IRS site, not my personal opinion (because if you want my personal opinions then enjoy them, but don’t use them as a substitute for a tax specialist or a lawyer’s).

The IRS has a great round-up of nonprofit topics. From there you can drill down to: Tax Information for Contributors


For donors wanting to know how to claim a deduction for their contribution, you want: Publication 526; For charities wanting to know the requirements for charitable contributions substation and disclosure, look to: Publication 1771 (Rev. 7-2005) Charitable Contributions Substantiation and Disclosure Requirements


From Publication 1771:

There are two general rules that organizations need to be aware of to meet substantiation and disclosure requirements for federal income tax return reporting purposes:

  • a donor is responsible for obtaining a written acknowledgment from a charity for any single contribution of $250 or more before the donor can claim a charitable contribution on his/her federal income tax return
  • a charitable organization is required to provide a written disclosure to a donor who receives goods or services in exchange for a single payment in excess of $75

More on written acknowledgments and written disclosures is addressed in this publication.



NOT FOR CARS, PLANES OR AUTOMOBILES

On this topic, I will venture one opinion, exercise caution in this area, as the rules are very recent, very specific, and red-flag items for the IRS. The rules in this publication do not apply to a donated motor vehicle, boat, or airplane if the claimed value exceeds $500. For information on vehicle donations, see IRS Publication 4302 (Rev. 5-2006) (for rules that apply to the donee) and IRS Publication 4303 (2-2006) (for rules that apply to the donor).

For assistance about valuing donated property, see Publication 561.

AND NOW A WORD FOR A GOOD CAUSE (Click ChipIn to help Beth raise money as a joint effort, a blog experiment and a fundraiser!)



Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thanks for the thoughtful response! Very useful. Also, thanks for posting the widget too.
11/17/2006 8:43 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE LIES PEOPLE TELL US (AND THE ONES WE TELL OURSELVES)

"I don’t understand these fundraisers, …they waste all this money…why don't they just give the money to …the sick people?" "…you know what? They don’t! They throw a party so rich people like me can spend $10,000 on a table and then they give it to the sick people!" ...that’s how it’s done ! Joan Cusack to Jennifer Aniston in "Friends with Money" Alright, let's get this over with folks: Fundraisers are a Lie! Yes that's right you heard me. A few months back, I attended a luncheon to raise funds for a school for the deaf. Yes, it was luncheon and a fashion show and a fundraiser all in one. First there was the obligatory silent auction, then (during lunch) the not-so-silent auction, and then after lunch when the plates were taken away, we were asked if we would like to purchase the Orchid Centerpieces! Hadn't they got enough from us? Let me think-No! Easy as it is to lampoon a fundraiser, that is not where I am going today. One of the ladies w...
Read more

GRAFITTI OR SOCIAL CHANGE?

Image
art institutions are a severely limited arena of reception for ideas about public issues --Robbie Conal If I can't take my coffee break, Gone is the sense of enterprise ...something within me dies. -- How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying I was born with a "Question Authority" bumper sticker metaphorically stuck on the back of my car. I grew up with that expression (and what it represents) as my moral imperative. But I've been worried lately. I've been worried because it doesn't seem to be turning out the way I thought it would. Seems a QA attitude is not necessarily conducive to civil society. It all depends on who's the authority I suppose. I seem to have the easiest time applying it to government and politics. But at what point do the concepts of "questioning" and the notion of "participating" intersect? Becoming a manager was a pivotal point in my life. A place where I had to make the transition from "hating t...
Read more

BIRTH OF A BLOG: GUERILLA MARKETING, EFFECTIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGY & GOOD CONTENT WIN THE DAY

Birth of a Blog: Guerilla Marketing, Effective Use of Technology and Good Content Win the Day by pam ashlund A funny thing happened when I started using Technorati. All I wanted was a quick way to see who ( if ANYONE ) was linking to my blog. First, I had to sign up with one of these services and I picked Technorati because it was the first one I came across. Second, I then found out that I was right from the beginning, no one was linking to my site. Third, I decided to try my hand at a bit of self-marketing, which went as follows: Get my brother-in-law to link to my site Set up another dummy blog and link to myself Arm wrestle another friend to link to my site None of that had much of an impact (of course) so I moved on to some actual strategy: Add tags to my blog configuration on Technorati Add tags to my posts (this was painful and manual although I later found a script for it) Test the results - found I showed up in search engines a LITTLE bit more frequently Still no links (tap, ...
Read more