Gift Accounting and Acknowledgment

Providing High Quality Professional Service

to Your Organization: A Large Shop Perspective

Presented byMichael SeymourSenior Director, Development OperationsKeck School of MedicineUniversity of Southern California mseymour@usc.edu

Presentation Goals Gift Acceptance Policies Best Gift Accounting Practices for Larger Shops Checks / Cash gifts Credit Card gifts Electronic Fund Transfers (EFTs) Acknowledgements and Receipts New(er) Technologies: barcoding and scanning Work Flow and Forms Resources

Gift Acceptance Policies 3 ways to take gifts: - for granted - with guilt - with gratitude

Need to establish a written policy for the types of gifts your institution will and will not accept

Who can accept gifts on behalf of the institution ? President ? VP’s ? Financial Officers ? Development Officers ?

Policy is often tied to your institution’s mission and/or goals

Legal / Tax ramifications

Best Gift Accounting Practices for Larger Shops

We adopt and implement best practices in order

to achieve:

Overall cost savings for the organization Reduce complexity Improve operational efficiency Improve communication Continued availability of service

Checks / Cash gifts

USC KSOM prepares batches for gifts of $1 - $1,500 to be sent to Bank of America processing center. A courier comes 3 times a week. (Monday / Wednesday / Friday)

Checks over $1,500, any cash deposits and all credit card gifts get batched daily and are deposited at the Cashier’s Office via “G” receipts. Larger gifts ($25,000 / $50,000 / $100,000 +) are put onto a single G-receipt to facilitate processing of the batch.

Credit Card gifts Credit cards are swiped daily,

copied for file documentation and batched. They are sent to the Cashier’s Office for G-receipts.

Batches are then entered onto the gift system through Restricted Fund Accounting (RFA).

Electronic Fund Transfers

Electronic Fund Transfer gifts (EFTs) are made through the on-line giving websites. Notification of donations are made via e-mail to Sr. Director of Development Operations and he accesses the secured server for the data / transactions. 99% of these gifts are memorial donations.

Acknowledgements and Receipts Memorial gifts get entered into a separate MS

Access database (dating back to FY94). Acknowledgements get printed in batches after entry (daily / every couple of days, etc…)

Donor gets an acknowledgement and the surviving family / relative gets an acknowledgement

Once the gift is entered into the gift system, official IRS tax receipts are generated in batch sequence (usually weekly).

New(er) Technologies: barcoding and scanning

Some institutions are using barcoding and scanning of gifts which greatly speeds up processing time.

(example: University of Illinois Foundation contact: Christy Devocelle, Director of Gift Operations devocelle@uifuillinois.edu)

Reporting

Resources

Fundsnet -- www.fundsnetservices.com/fundrais.htm

CASE -- www.CASE.org Advancement Services section

Bentz Whaley Flessner bibliography “Gift Regulation Resources” tab