How does your organization enter gifts from Third Parties like CAF, Yourcause, etc?

Ines Munguia
Ines Munguia
Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary Facilitator 1
in Organizational Best Practices General Discussions

Hi everyone!

How does your organization enter gifts from third parties like:

  • Yourcause
  • Benevity
  • CAF
  • Network for Good

Comments

  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson Community All-Star
    Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary

    @Ines Munguia Are you using the Raiser's Edge? Are you looking for best practices on hard/soft credit, etc.?

  • Ines Munguia
    Ines Munguia
    Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary Facilitator 1

    @Christine Robertson We are in the process of transitioning to RE NXT and want to make sure we use best practices when we move over.

    Would the gifts be entered under the third party and soft credit the company or the individuals, or would the gift be entered under directly the company?

  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson Community All-Star
    Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary

    @Ines Munguia One nuance to be aware of when you build out your practice is whether or not your organization should send a tax receipt to the donor. I believe that you would not for all of the examples that you listed, but I would defer to any documentation that you have to determine that for certain.

    That said, assuming that you would not receipt any of these individuals, there are two generally accepted options. People tend to have strong opinions on these, but in my experience if you use either of them consistently, either of them can work for this situation.

    Option 1 - Hard credit goes to the company that you receive the gift from, soft credit goes to the individual. If you choose this, you will need to include soft credits for giving history in queries, reports, etc.

    Option 2 - Hard credit goes to individual. Gift is marked “Do Not Receipt” and Receipt Amount is $0. You can find more about this option via Bill Connors' website and his presentation from 2018 at bbcon.

  • Rachel Kauer
    Rachel Kauer Community All-Star
    Kudos 4 August 2025 Monthly Challenge Badge Name Dropper Participant

    @Ines Munguia

    Hi Ines,

    At our org, we hard credit the entity that made the payment, and soft credit the individuals or organizations who directed the gift. So we treat 3rd party giving vehicles (like Benevity, Your cause etc.) like Donor Advised Fund Sponsors (DAFs).

    For example, if we rec a payment from Benevity of $100, we'd log in to the Benevity portal to see the payment/distribution details. See that it was $25 from John Doe, $25 from Jane Deer, 25$ from Roger Rabbit, and $25 ACME Matching Gift Program.

    We would then enter the payment in RE on the organizational record Benevity, and add soft credit to the Benevity gift to John, Jane, Roger, and Acme Matching Gift Program for $25 each.

    Hope this helps!

  • Lynne Frantz
    Lynne Frantz
    Name Dropper First Anniversary Facilitator 1

    @Rachel Kauer

    Hi Rachel,

    We also use the standard you've described. It's rather clear cut in most instances. However, with the insurgence of more of these 3rd party payor platforms, we've encountered a few issues that need further dissection.

    How do you handle the hard and soft crediting on the following?

    Our bank receives an EFT from Cybergrants - CAFA (Charities Aid Fund of America)

    Donor report pulled from Cybergrants:

    Company Name: Exelon

    Pass-Through Agent: CyberGrants

    Program: Employee Giving Payroll Deduction

    Donor: John Smith

    I would welcome your input and anyone else who has encountered these circumstances.

  • Rachel Kauer
    Rachel Kauer Community All-Star
    Kudos 4 August 2025 Monthly Challenge Badge Name Dropper Participant

    @Lynne Frantz

    Hi Lynne,

    We have a few split checks we've received from 3rd party distributors like that containing a combination of payroll deductions, matching gifts, and straight-out donations.

    I'm not sure, I'm in love with our current process for handling them but we create a separate gift record for each split in the gift by the entity that directed the funds, soft-crediting or MG-crediting them to those entities - but hard crediting all to the distributor entity making a note in the references “Split-check” and keeping the check number and date consistent.

    The reason we hard credit to the distributing entity is purely for audit and reconciliatory purposes. This makes canned reporting harder - but if you are already operating with hard credits to DAF Sponsors and soft crediting to DAF Advisors then your reports would already be set up to deal with soft-credit reporting as needed. ?

    For example:

    We get a $370 check from a third-party distributor Checks&Grants LLC. - which had a $20 check fee already removed.

    $50 is from Toon Town Corp. and is a matching gift for Jessica Rabbit, $150 are from several payroll deductions/employee giving program donations through Town Toon from Roger Rabbit, with a $10 cause fee. $200 is a straight donation from Eddie Valiant.

    We would create the following gift records:

    • $50 hard-credited to Checks&Grants LLC, MG-Pay Jessica Rabbit, soft-credited Toon Town Corp.
    • $140 hard credited to Checks&Grants LLC, soft-credited to Roger Rabbit for $150.
    • $180 hard credited to Checks&Grants LLC, soft-credited to Eddie Valiant for $200.

    The cause fees get subtracted from the specific gift record they were associated with - while the CHECK fee comes off the largest gift. I rather hate the part about the check fee…that is how we have done it historically. I am currently reviewing it with our Business Office to see if it it makes more sense to split the check fee between all gift parts by percentage of total gift - but then it just gets even messier…And to split it evenly by the number of splits can wipe out some smaller gifts.

    There is a lot I don't love about doing it this way, but having matching gifts rolled into a split check complicates an already complicated giving chain!

    I don't know if I feel this is the best practice for these split-check gifts, but it's what we currently do until I can think of something better and get it approved. Hopefully, you can work out something better! Best of luck!

  • Lynne Frantz
    Lynne Frantz
    Name Dropper First Anniversary Facilitator 1

    @Rachel Kauer
    Hi Rachel,

    Sorry about the delay in replying to your post. Thank you for your insight. Regarding reporting, we're fortunate that we have a dedicated person to create custom SQL reporting instead of relying on RE reports.

    I've relayed your procedure to our team and sadly, there's still no agreement on who should be hard credited. That's my frustration but I do appreciate your input.

    Thanks again ?

  • Lynne Frantz
    Lynne Frantz
    Name Dropper First Anniversary Facilitator 1
    @Rachel Kauer
  • Sherry Aldrich
    Sherry Aldrich
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Ines Munguia We enter the gift under who ever has written the check and then soft credit to the constituent. We use gift subtype field and our drop down for this type of gift is “Third Party”. We can see that it's a third party but it makes it easier for reporting since not all soft credits are thirds party or donor advised or something like that. We write the acknowledgement letter similar to "We received a gift of $XX.XX from ORG or BANK Name on your behalf. We do not put tax information on the bottom of the letter like other gifts. If the constituent needs more / different letter we can adjust as appropriate, however I don't think in the 8 years I've been here that we have ever been asked to do so.

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