Non-Profit Donations

[Pablo Francesca]

Thank you for all your responses.  It was especially interesting when Hubert mentioned the use of A/R as a method of tracking pledges.  Although pledges aren't applicable in our situation, they certainly fit into the for-profit accounting structure of gc, and are handled in a specific way in fund accounting.

I still think gc is clunky for non profit accounting, but it sounds like your Druid might bridge the reporting gap.

--- On Wed, 4/28/10, Hubert Bahr <hab at hbahr.org> wrote:

From: Hubert Bahr <hab at hbahr.org>
Subject: Re: Non-Profit Donations
To: "Pablo Francesca" <rshgeneral at yahoo.com>
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org, "Jean-David Beyer" <jeandavid8 at verizon.net>
Date: Wednesday, April 28, 2010, 11:57 AM




  
  
I actually have them set up as A/R type or an asset account.  This
would certainly make more sense for a pledge and separate receipt
situation, but still works for donation although it requires two
transactions per donation.  One to record the purpose of the
pledge/donation (sale) and one to record the payment.  In most cases I
am receiving donations in clumps.  For example Sunday morning
offerings.  I separate the donations into various groups depending on
the designation and with one group that might have a single donation
with splits.  I process all the donations per group as one transaction
say for example  "Tithes and Offerings"  or "Haiti Relief" or  "Van
fund"  I enter each donation as a charge split.  GC keeps a running
total that is transfered as lump sum to the income spit designated
account,  This takes care of the pledge portion.  Now to record the
payment still within the same transaction I copy the lump amount as a
transfer to a "undeposited funds" charge split.  I then enter each
donation again as an income split.  The end result is that the income
account shows one transaction for the total receipts(pledges) on that
day, the cash (undeposited funds) account shows a transaction for each
different source of income on that date, And each donor account shows
both and invoice and payment on that date.  For my giving report I only
want the invoice entries since it shows where the funds were applied
(what was purchased).  After I make the deposit for that day the lump
sum from the undeposited funds account to the Checking account.  At
this time my A/R and Undeposited funds should show 0 balance, If not I
have made a transcription error somewhere.



I am hoping to create a druid for this to remove the double manual
entry but an accounts visibility viewpoint this works for me.  I am
also planning to create custom reports to eliminate the editing in a
spreadsheet.  But until those are functional this is an improvement
over what my predecessor was doing in Quickbooks.



Hubert



Pablo Francesca wrote:

  
    
      
        What account type is your Donations account? If it is an
asset type, I'm not following your organizing method. If its an income
type, it seems like your saying you have income accounts for donors and
income accounts by donation type.  That seems even odder. Another
possibility is that you have income sub accounts under each income
donor account.  Is that what you are doing?

        

This would certainly allow for accurate donor reporting, but then it
would seem to break reporting by donation type.  If this what you're
doing, then I guess you would have export all the data an manipulate it
in a spreadsheet.  I was trying to avoid that.

        

        
          In my case I have a top level account
Donations with a sub account for each donor.  I then have income or
designated fund accounts for the various targets of giving.  I can then
run a report on each donors account that lists all his giving with
memos/account names to designate where his donations went.   Or I can
run a report of all donors import to a spread sheet add carriage
returns etc so I can bulk print.   My understanding is that the
unstable version is better equipped to use Customer accounts to support
this type of reporting, but I haven't tried it yet.  From an accounting
viewpoint a donor is treated like customer.  The donor provides income,
he receives a share of services for his donation,  ie he pays for part
of the expenses and shares in the gratification of whatever works the
NPO performs.  Yes there are special rules but change the name or
titles on the reports they still look up data and accumulate it etc. 
So far I have just ran a test case, and I still needed to tweak the
reports in a spread sheet, but the data was all there.  I needed to
Delete a column and add a total, but it still beat the method my
predecessor was doing it.  For our donors we list each individual
donation and the total.  We find this gives them more confidence, or
lets them  cross check with their records.  Sometimes it results in
making an additional donation to make up for one that they
inadvertently missed.  We send out a midyear report as well as the
year-end report.

Hubert

          

Pablo Francesca wrote:

> Based on my understanding of your reporting, I'm not sure how I
can easily generate a donation report for each donor.  To be sure, an
Income Report will list all my donor's contributions, but this is every
donation.  I was thinking specifically of the need to fairly easily
generate a donor report for he donor's tax purposes.  I thought about
running an account report, and this would suffice if I only wanted to
list my donations by donor. 

> In the situation for this church, some donors will donate with no
restrictions or expectations.  Some donations will be quid pro quo. 
Suppose Bob the Donor makes a one time contribution of 100 and then
later enrolls in a seminar for 200.  This seems like it requires a Bob
income account under General Donations and a Bob income account under
Seminar X. There doesn't seem to be any way to pull all of Bob's
donations in one report without doing it manually.

> 

>   

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