Peace Development Fund
Fiscal Sponsorship
Donations/Fundraising
Below please find information regarding accepting
donations and fundraising through PDF’s Fiscal Sponsorship Program.
The below information may not cover all instances of fundraising so
please feel free to ask if you have any questions.
1 – Accepting Donations. All donations for your project must come through PDF. At no time may the project accept a donation in its name directly – one exception is in kind gifts (see below). The project may bundle donations in the form of checks or credit card forms (see below) and send them to PDF. Please ensure that if you bundle donations to send them to PDF within 1 week of receiving them to avoid any stale dated checks and to allow for quicker processing on PDF’s end. The donors may also send donations directly to PDF’s Amherst P.O. Box address. The only thing that PDF needs to have on or with the donation is which project the funds are designated. However, if you have a form that you use to help you with your tracking of gifts please feel free to use it and send it along. Checks should be made out to one of the following:
-
Peace Development Fund (or PDF) with the project name in the memo
line
-
PDF/Name of project (in this order please)
Cash gifts may be accepted by the project and forward
to PDF by depositing the cash into your account and sending an
organizational check or money order to the Amherst address. For
those donors who wish to receive acknowledgment please have them fill in
the donation form (see below). For other cash gifts, they will be
marked as anonymous. For projects in the local Amherst area, you
may drop cash or other donations off to the office as long as a PDF
staff person is available to accept it. The San Francisco office
does not accept cash or other donations directly as all donation
processing takes place in Amherst.
In most cases, membership dues under $75 are also
considered donations and need to be sent to PDF as well (see below).
2 –
Credit Card Form/Cash Gift Form.
The attached form may be used for credit card or
cash gifts and even just to gather potential donor contact information.
Please do not add or subtract to the front of the form except to add
your project’s name. We recommend that you use the back of the
form to add additional information about your project.
When sending this form to PDF you may make a copy for your records,
however YOU MUST NOT KEEP THE CREDIT CARD
INFORMATION IN YOUR FILES DUE TO VARIOUS STATE AND FEDERAL LAWS AROUND
SECURITY OF THIS INFORMATION. If copying the form for your records
make sure to black out the credit card information on your copy.
3 –
Foundation Grants.
Payments from foundation grants must also come through PDF. In
addition, when submitting an application to another foundation send a
copy to PDF. PDF also must see the grant contract and sign off on
it prior to it going back to the granting foundation. Payments
should be sent directly to PDF. You are responsible for submitting
the report around the grant; remember you must submit a copy of the
report to PDF at the same time.
4 – In-Kind Gifts. PDF is able to offer project supporters in-kind tax receipts. In order to qualify for an in-kind gift receipt, the donor must provide a project with a tangible item – i.e. food for an event, an item for an auction/benefit, a computer, etc. To process these types of donations PDF will need the name of the donor (person or business), their contact information – address, email/phone number, the description of the item(s) donated (i.e. 10 large cheese pizzas) and the value that the donor places on the item. NEW – our auditor has informed us that the donor needs to provide a receipt in order to get a tax receipt – for example a supporter purchases an item and gives it to the project, a copy of the purchase receipt needs to be submitted along with the other information or for example a store donates items and provides a receipt on store invoice. PDF does not need to see these items. PDF will add these gifts to the donor record and send a tax receipt to the donor. Under IRS regulations, the receipt will show the description of the item donated and not the value (the IRS does not allow PDF to place a value on an item). There are special requirements for items donated that have a value over $5000 for the donor and if you have such a donation in the future let’s check in about them. In Kind Gifts do not include time or professional services under IRS rules, therefore someone donates time as a bookkeeper to your project or serves as a bartender at an event, that time is not considered an in-kind gift and PDF cannot offer a tax receipt, this time is considered volunteer time by the person.
5 – Vehicle Donations. PDF does not accept vehicle donations.
6 – Benefit Auctions. If your project plans to have an auction type benefit check in with me so that we can make sure donations for the auction and donations collected at the auction are handled properly.
7 – Paypal. PDF is able to offer projects a Paypal button for your website and emails. This button will be coded specifically to your project though the donations go into the general PDF Paypal account we can tell which project receives which funds. If for some reason you do not have a website, PDF can host a page on our website for your Paypal button and some basic information and a few photos about your work. PDF is able to offer two different Paypal buttons 1) for one-time gifts and 2) for automatic monthly donors. For the 2nd type of button we will need to know what are the donations levels that a project would like to see connected to the button. The minimum level is set at $15/month and there can be three or four additional option s- i.e. $15, $25, $50, $100 selections.
It is important that the html coding sent for the Paypal button is not changed or it will not work properly. Once the button is on your website or email, click on it to make sure it works and properly shows a name like “Peace Development Fund/Name of Your Project.”
You may want to place something like the following on your website so that your supporters understand how the PayPal system works –
“Through our Fiscal Sponsor PDF, we are able to accept PayPal donations. A PayPal account is not required. Click on the link below to be taken to PayPal, you will note on that page that the organization listed will appear as “Peace Development Fund/Insert Name of Project” this allows your gift to be properly coded to our account. Thank you.”
You do not need to use PayPal to accept donations if you do not what to do so, it is an option that PDF provides to groups in our Fiscal Sponsorship program.
8 – Accepting Credit Cards. Your supporters may make one-time gifts or monthly gifts through the PDF secure server. PDF’s credit card gifts are processed off line. Set up a link to this page on PDF’s website http://www.peacedevelopmentfund.org/page/donations PDF has added the following above the secure server link:
PDF's Secure Server accepts credit gifts for general
support and all of PDF's programs. If giving a gift to one of our
Fiscally Sponsored Projects on the PDF Secure Server please indicate
which project in the "Additional Information" section or the "Comments"
section to ensure the gift is properly coded. Thank you.
Attachment A is the page from the secure server so you may see the two areas a donor may list the name of your project.
Supporters may also make use of the credit card donation form as noted above.
On your website you may want to place something like the following:
“Through our Fiscal Sponsor PDF, we are able to
accept credit card donations. Follow the link to their website and
make your gift through their secure server. Peace Development Fund
will appear on your credit card not Insert
Name of Project. Make sure to note in
the Additional Information or the Comments section that the gift is
designated for Insert Name of Project.
Thank you.”
9 – Membership Dues.
Membership dues under $75 in most cases are
tax deductable and knowing the work of PDF’s Fiscally Sponsored Projects
I would say that any with membership dues should consider them as
donation and they should be forwarded to PDF like other donations.
See Attachment B.
10 – Donor
Acknowledgement. PDF sends to each
donor a thank you letter that includes the tax receipt for income tax
purposes. For donors making monthly gifts, they will receive a
once a year donation receipt for all gifts in the previous year – this
is sent out in January for tax purposes. We highly recommend that
projects send personal thank you notes to their donors as well.
11 - Notice of
Donors/Donations. Each month, those
projects with donations will receive a donor report that contains donor
name, contact information and gifts made. If you are in the middle
of a heavy fundraising period and upon your request I will be happy to
provide this report at other times so that you may follow up with donor
thank you notes or to see how the fundraising appeal is progressing.
12 – Grant
Disbursement. The
disbursement of grant funds is on an automatic monthly schedule – the 1st
full week of the month. The exception to this is for projects with
less than $500 on account. Those with under $500 on account may
request those funds be paid out during the regular grant writing
schedule otherwise the funds will be allowed to build up until they
reach $500 or more. At the end of PDF’s fiscal year (30 June), PDF
will bring the account back down to zero by paying out remaining funds
to the project. If a project has a need to have PDF retain their
funds for a longer period of time, PDF is happy to discuss that with you
on an individual basis.
13 – Changing your website and other fundraising material. It is important that the project make sure their website and other fundraising material is updated to reflect the projects relationship with PDF. When describing the relationship only use the term Fiscal Sponsor for example Project X is a fiscally sponsored project of the Peace Development Fund or the Peace Development Fund fiscally sponsors Project X. A version of the following would suffice.
While not a 501(c)(3) itself, Project X is still a
charitable organization. Through our fiscal sponsor the Peace
Development Fund (PDF), a 501(c)(3) recognized public foundation, our
supporters are able to make tax deductible donations. All of our
donations go through and are processed by PDF. PDF will provide
each donor with the appropriate tax receipt. Thank you for your
support.
14 – Lobbying. See Attachment C - jeopardizing 501(c)(3) status. Projects of PDF sign a contract that does not permit lobbying activities without PDF’s prior approval. Please read the attachment to help you understand what is permitted and not permitted without PDF’s prior approval. You actions can impact PDF’s 501(c)(3) status and may result in your termination from the program.
15 – Funds not processed by PDF. PDF does not process money from the sale of items – for example: t-shirts, coffee and other such items that your project may sell to help raise funds. These sales are not donations as the supporter receives a good in exchange for their money.
16 – EBAY/Mission Fish. PDF has been asked about donations through EBAY/Mission Fish. After considering this option and examining the cost of this program, PDF has decided not to participate in the EBAY/Mission Fish donation program. This decision involves two main reasons 1) Mission Fish has very poor and difficult to reach Customer Service; and 2) The fee that Mission Fish charges, starting out at 20% and going up from there, is far too high in our opinion.
17 – Facebook - Causes. PDF is set up to be your beneficiary on Facebook Causes. When you set up your Facebook Cause make sure to select the Peace Development Fund as the beneficiary. There is a lag time from the time your supporters make a gift on the Cause site to when PDF receives the funds. The funds are processed through Network for Good before being sent on to PDF. Please also note that Network for Good takes a small percentage as an admin fee prior to the funds being sent to PDF.
18 – Stock Gifts. If you have donors that wish to make a stock gift, please have them contact us directly. Information about stock gifts may also be found on our website at http://www.peacedevelopmentfund.org/page/stockdonations. Make sure the stock gift is designated properly to your project.
19 – Minimum Credit Card/Paypal Gifts. While PDF is happy to accept all gifts for the projects in our program, gifts that fall below $15 on Paypal or for Credit Card processing costs PDF money – the 6% fee does not cover the charges by Paypal or the Credit Card companies nor the cost of sending a thank you letter/tax receipt. Please try to encourage $15 as the minimum level of donation for all Paypal and Credit Card gifts. Of course we understand that some donors may only be able to make smaller gifts, whenever possible encourage smaller size gifts through checks.
20 – Matching Gifts. PDF is eligible to receive matching gifts through companies that your donors may work for. Encourage your donors to see if their company makes matching gifts and to fill out the request at their company for such gifts. Make sure that the matching gift is designated for your project. See Attachment D for a sample list of Matching Gift Companies.
21 – End of Year Gifts. For tax receipt purposes PDF must receive end of calendar year gifts by December 31st or with a December 31st postmark on the envelope. PDF is obligated to follow IRS rules on gifts and if the gifts arrives to PDF with a January postmark (even if the check is written out for Dec or the credit card gift is indicated for Dec) we must mark it as a January gift and not a December gift. If you collect gifts and forward them to PDF make sure to send in the envelope with the gift – at the same time – to have it counted for the correct year. We cannot make any exceptions.