How to Track In-Kind Donations in a Meaningful Way

Following is a transcript of this episode of the Two Minute Treasurer’s Tip Podcast from MoneyMinder, with audio/video below.

Welcome to the Two Minute Treasurer’s Tip Podcast. I am your host Cyndi Meuchel with MoneyMinder, and today, we’re talking about tax donations.

Mindy asks: Some of my volunteers want to donate products for our event and aren’t interested in getting reimbursed. Is that acceptable?

Yes, this is perfectly acceptable – and very generous. We refer to these as in-kind donations. However, it’s important at the end of an event or activity to know what your costs were. So, if you don’t have a record of some of those in-kind donations, you won’t have the full picture to work with next year.

For example, I recently talked with a group that had all of the meat for a BBQ donated. It was a generous donation. But they didn’t track the donation. And the next year, when they held the annual BBQ, and the meat wasn’t donated, they found themselves not charging enough to cover their costs because they based everything on last year’s results, and the new board didn’t realize this large expense wasn’t accounted for.

This resulted in a loss for an event that was supposed to be a break-even. It was painful.

So, be sure to record those in-kind donations. And give those lovely donors a Donation Acknowledgement for that donation so they can write it off on their taxes if they want. We have a great article in our Help Center for those of you using MoneyMinder. It provides step-by-step instructions for how to do this.

I sure hope it was food for thought. No pun intended. My name is Cyndi Meuchel, and this is your Two Minute Treasurer’s Tip for today.

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