Donation from collapsed RESP

Fiona Chan

Hi all. We have received a donation of a collapsed RESP from an Asset Management company. There is no donor indicated. What is the best practice to enter the gift into RE? Should I put the gift to the Asset Management company and issue them a thank you letter and non-charitable receipt? Thanks!

Miki Martin

@Fiona Chan welcome to Community! I had to look up what RESP was. ? I'm guessing this is a Canadian thing so I don't know how different processes might be here in the US. Your process should be based on how your org has chosen to handle things like DAFs and such, which I would guess a RESP would be handled similarly. At my current org we enter the gift under the charitable org that cut the check (in this case it would be your asset management company) and soft credit the donor. At my prior org, I entered the donation under the donor directly, which I know some orgs do. You could then soft credit the charitable org. This is one of those questions that has many answers. Your org just needs to decide how you want to credit the donation and be sure it's consistent.

As for not knowing the donor, I would recommend contacting the asset management company to see if they can release that information. It may be the donor wanted to remain anonymous. In that case, I would then utilize the anonymous constituent record in the system so you know it came from an anonymous source (whether as a hard or soft credit depends on how you're processing these types of gifts as referenced in the first paragraph).

Perhaps someone with direct experience with this will see this and offer some help. Also, not sure how your Finance/Accounting department may fit into the way you process donations and possibly post them (if you do so) so that could also be a consideration. From my limited experience this is what I can offer. Good luck!

Fiona Chan

@Miki Martin Thanks, Miki. This helps!