[mmcgee]

I'm hoping someone can explain the United Way public sector campaigns such as SEFA to me, because the person I've been talking to at UW has not been very clear (or friendly).

Here's the problem: We got an "Acknowledgments to Agencies" list with 4 people who have made pledges through the SEFA campaign listed, two of which have already been paid at one time, and two of which are apparently going to get paid quarterly. Now, my director wants to create individual records for these people in RE, enter their pledges and then enter each payment we get toward them until the pledges are fulfilled. The problem is, we don't have any way of knowing how much of each check we get for the SEFA campaign (which is combined with 2 other public sector campaigns--CUNY and CMC) is for each of these 4 individuals' pledges.

I called our contact at UW and asked if we could have some kind of report breaking down each of these people's pledge payments and the processing fees that come out of them, but she said the public sector campaigns are not broken down that way, and something about how part of the checks we get for these campaigns are from "undesignated" pledges, ones where the donors didn't specify which agency ther pledges was to go to. I'm hoping someone can make this whole process clearer to me, and offer any suggestions as to how to enter these individual donors in RE so that we can include them in future mailings.

Have you gone cross-eyed yet? Please help!

[LCox]

If someone here knows better than I, please correct me. But as I understand it, you should be recording these donations as coming from United Way. The pledges were made to UW, and are being paid to UW, and the donors are getting their tax deductions from UW. All you need to do is record each amount you received from UW as a donation from them, and acknowledge it to them, but not as a tax receipt since they are a fellow charity.

UW gives you only the names of those people who want acknowledgements from you - what I do is send, again, an acknowledgement letter but not a "tax receipt" letter to those folks, and thank them for donating to us through United Way's (insert program name here).

I hope that helps.

-- Leslie Cox, (who used to work for a place whose major funding was United Way based)

[Melissa Siobhan]

This is exactly correct, The gifts are not from the individuals they are from UW. Because UW is a non-profit the individuals made a gift to them and were receipted. You can not give them credit for that gift again but because UW gave you the money (or likely less minus fees) you can and should give them credit and record the gift on their record.

If you want to give recognition to the individuals responsible for the gift you will need to find another way. This has been discussed before and I suggest you read the archives. I use a gift type of "other" for the full pledge amount and recognize them for that amount immediately - regardless of payments (as UW does not furnish enough info typically to do anything else)

[LCox]

Thanks for the confirmation, Melissa. As a related issue - we are currently having a problem deciding how to put donations from "donor advised fund" places into RE.

I am contending that, like with UW, the donor has already donated to the funding organization, and the gift should go on the funding org's record, with no tax receipt letter generated to either the donor or the funding org (the donor got their tax break when they began the fund with the funding org).

The way is has been done in the past is to hard credit the "fund" (which they are putting as an alias on the actual constituent's individual record - they do this with trusts also; but that's a whole other issue) - and then soft credit the funding org. I contend this is backwards (totally aside from the fact that the donor's fund is not an individual and doesn't belong on their indiv. record).

Also, my dev. officers want recognition to read as only being from the fund - i.e. "The Smith's Donor Fund" rather than, as requested by the funding org - The Smith's Donor Fund of the Community Foundation." They claim it would upset the "Smith's" if we did it any other way; I say that at this point, the "Community Foundation" is the actual donor, and their request takes precedence, and the "Smith's" have probably been made aware of how their donations are to be acknowledged already.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Same issue, slightly different situation than UW, but really the same issue at base.

Thanks in advance to the wonderful forum responders out there!

Smiles, Leslie

[Melissa Siobhan]

You should not, to my understanding, ever put gifts from a DAF directly on an individual's record. We create an org record for each fund and link it via parent corp and relationship to the foundation and via relationships (with an auto soft credit) to the individual. All gifts from that DAF go on that record and are soft credited to the individual(s). It is customary to send a receipt to the fund unless they request you not to. You are also often encouraged to acknowledge the individuals but this means a simple thank you letter - not receipt.

It is absolutely up to the powers that be at the foundation (not the individual donors) how to recognize the gift. I am certain the individuals were told how the gift would be recognized when they set up the fund and agreed to it when they signed the paperwork. But since you gave soft credit you can also recognize the individuals for that gift should you wish to. We actually recognize both the DAF and the individuals in most cases unless the donor asks not to be recognized.

[LCox]

Thanks again, Melissa - it's so helpful to have a way to back up what I'm trying to explain to folks, otherwise as the only Data person around, I feel kind of outnumbered by development folks, and it's hard to get important points across.

I will eventually have to tackle the situation of their putting Trusts and Funds as aliases on the individual's record, but that will have to wait for another day.

Meanwhile, I hope the original posted doesn't feel hijacked and that this info will also be of use to them.

-- Leslie

[vsiegel]

This is an ongoing challenge for lots of us. Many who chimed in here are right - the donor did not give a gift to you, they gave a gift to UW, who is then disseminating the gift to us. Here's what we do -

When UW sends us a list at the beginning of the "pledge" year, we take that list and send a thank you to the donors with language that indicates that we appreciate that they designated their UW pledge to our organization. We put the amount pledged in the letter. They get no other mail from us.

Since they are not our donors, it would be disingenuous to add them to our database.

If they are already a donor, we do add a SC to their record for the amount per payment as checks come in from UW - more to identify that a donor "touches" us in multiple ways and it's important to keep track of that for stewardship purposes.