Can churches give a gift to try to get more money for Lottie Moon?

by Smith
(Edgewood, NM USA)

We were wondering if to try to get more money for our Lottie Moon Christmas offering our church wanted to give a coffee mug to those who give and it doesn’t matter the size of the gift we give it to the individual. Can we do this?

Comments for Can churches give a gift to try to get more money for Lottie Moon?

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Dec 08, 2020

Insubstantial or de minimis Value
by: Vickey

Yes. You can definitely give a gift for donations!

What you want to research and be aware of ... is whether that "gift" will require you to give a "regular" donation receipt or a quid pro quo receipt.

A quid pro quo contribution is a payment made to a church or nonprofit which is partly for a contribution and partly in exchange for goods and services provided to the donor by your organization.

The "value" of the gift determines which receipt to give for the contribution.

The "mug" will probably have an "insubstantial or de minimis value"and can be treated as having no value for purposes of disclosure pursuant to IRC 6115.

Since the dollar amount that the IRS considers insubstantial or de minimis is adjusted annually, check any updates or modification to Rev. Proc. 90-12 and Rev. Proc. 92-49.

You may want to consider purchasing my "Handling Donations" ebook in my Church Accounting Package: found here: https://www.freechurchaccounting.com/church_accounting_package.html

I go into a lot of detail on how to handle different types of donations...including quid pro quo contribution and give examples of the different receipts for each type of donations.

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Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to Earmarked Contributions.

If you want to DIY your payroll, I highly recommend you look at using Gusto! It is very user friendly and their support is awesome! Plus they know how to set up and maintain payrolls for churches and nonprofit organizations.

Note: I am a "partner" of Gusto, but as I have told you before ... I never recommend anything that we or our clients have not tried and love =)

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