Restricted Gift Minimums

Steve Schapiro
Steve Schapiro
Sixth Anniversary
in Organizational Best Practices General Discussions

Gift acceptance policy - restricted gifts. Does anyone impose a minimum dollar amount for someone to restrict a gift? We have a number of donors who make very small restricted gifts in the range of $5 to $100 dollars. Thanks.

Comments

  • Chris Nungesser
    Chris Nungesser
    Fifth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    Hi @Steve Schapiro!

    Generally speaking, we do not have minimums for someone to restrict the gift. I have a chart of accounting codes (aka restrictions) that tie to various designations/funding buckets. As long as I have a designation for it, the person can direct their gift toward that program/fund/etc.

    If someone wanted to restrict their gift in a super specific way (that went more detailed than my accounting restrictions), then we might have to talk about an amount. We might look at how much it would take to fund that program or part of our operation for the year (or over a given period of time). That might help us determine a minimum.

    Chris

  • Barbara Kunkel
    Barbara Kunkel
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    Hi Stephen, We operate basically how Chris described restricted gifts. We only have a minimum dollar amount in place for creating an endowed fund.

  • Chris Fedor
    Chris Fedor
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 4 March 2026 Challenge: Answered Questions February 2026 Monthly Challenge

    We also operate the way Chris describes.

  • Faith Murray
    Faith Murray Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    We have a number of restricted funds that have no minimum amount set. These include things like facility maintenance, capital campaign, etc., which are ongoing and always have an active fund. If a donor tries to donate a restricted gift to something bizarre that we do not have set up as a fund (which generally means we are not encouraging donations to it), then we will have a discussion with Finance and then with the donor about whether we can accept the gift. But that is not so much because of amount as because we need to make sure we want to honor their unusual directives.

    Other than that, Endowments are the only thing we give a minimum amount, because it requires a certain balance to generate any meaningful revenue. A $5 gift restricted for church poinsettias is easy to fulfill – buy one poinsettia and you never have to think about it again – but an endowment is a forever commitment.

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