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acknowledging your donors and keeping solid donation records is essential to good nonprofit governance in this brief video i want to take a look at some rules and best practice guidance that will help you in your quest to be a good steward of your non-profit's resources [Music] i'm greg mcrae from foundation group and welcome to 501c3 university thanking your donors by giving them a receipt letter is essential to good donor relations it just makes sense because let's face it people like to have their good deeds acknowledged if i give your charity a thousand dollars i'm much more inclined to give you another thousand dollars if i get a thank you letter from you now interestingly the irs doesn't actually require charities to provide receipts to donors at all now you really shouldn't do it mainly because it's just common courtesy the rules regarding what has to be on a receipt that really has to do more with the documentation necessary for a donor to be able to write off their gifts on their taxes the irs will not allow a donor to get a tax deduction for any gift over 250 dollars without a proper receipt from the charity treat your donors right and give them that receipt a key element in thanking donors is the actual acknowledgement letter these days that's probably more likely to be an electronic thank you by email rather than some handcrafted letter even though either's fine the more important part is remembering to include information that allows your donor to get a potential tax deduction for their gift now a good receipt acknowledgement it's going to show things like the name of the donor the date and amount of the donation and a statement that basically says something like this abc charity is a 501c3 organization and no goods or services were received in exchange for this gift it may be considered tax deductible to the full extent of the law now you can word that however you wish so long as the overall message communicates those things one recall i'll add to this is for non-cash gifts otherwise known as in-kind donations the irs does not allow charities to include evaluation of the donated item on the gift receipt you provide your donor now you've probably seen this if you've ever donated a bag of clothes or other items to goodwill the receipt that you get doesn't have a valuation on it so the receipt you give your donor should have the name the date and the type and description of the gift or the items but not evaluation it's up to the donor to establish the valuation for purposes of any possible tax deduction we've said it before every rule has its exception right well the exception here is a vehicle gift even though it's considered a type of in-kind donation the donor should be provided with an irs form 1098-c which will list a valuation for the vehicle unlike other in-kind gifts an important point here is to remember the reported valuation should be the fair market value of the vehicle or the amount of money that the charity flipped the vehicle or sold it for assuming that it sold it for cash without using it even though charities themselves can operate their books on and off calendar fiscal year individual donors are always automatically on a calendar year for their taxes therefore if you plan to provide a year-end receipt showing all the gifts for the tax year get that out to your donors by january 31st of the following year you don't actually have to do a year-end report especially if you've been receiving each of your gifts throughout the year but it's still a good idea as i said at the beginning thanking your donors it's just good business doing it in a way that makes it easier for them to get a tax deduction well that's even better well that's it for today be sure and like this video subscribe if you haven't already and click the bell icon to be notified of new content thanks for watching we'll see you next time [Music] you