Third Party Gifts

Often donations will come in through a Community Foundation, United Way, and other 3rd party organizations of the like.

Ultimately this comes down to The information you receive from those payments, and the information you need down the road.

When you Don’t Know the Donor:

Often United Way or the like will send a check of employee donations.

United Way needs to be the Contact making the donation. Maybe do not send them a Thank you letter (check that acknowledged box on the donation page). If you have at least first or last names, put in the comments.

If they send you donor names:

Really your choice on how to handle, depending on the reports you need in the end.

Some organizations will attribute to the Donor, even if you only have email or address, or even nothing at all. At least you have their name.

DonationType = Donation
PaymentMethod = UnitedWay (or the like)… or some will just call it a “Check” and indicate UnitedWay in the comments

Most will still have United Way as a contact in themselves, to indicate the original donation. No acknowledgement letter.

And if you go that route, you’d need to Soft Credit back to the donor.

Community Foundations

Works the same way, IF they send you names of the donors.

What reports do you need down the road? If they give you names, maybe you don’t even need to attribute the original donation as a check from “Oregon Community Foundation”. You’re not going to send them an Acknowledgement letter any way.

Just use the donors on the list to build your list of donors. Check the “Acknowledged” box if you don’t want to send an additional Thank You to them — since the Foundation has already sent them a receipt.

IF you need both, you’d need the Community Foundation as original check.

Create each donor as it’s own contact, with DonationType = SoftCredit, comments or PaymentMethod as the Community Foundation so you can track that down the road.