Hello again DONATION advisors and beta testers. This email will only be of interest to those of you in the U.S.A., and perhaps only those in churches. (Sorry, I don’t have a way to segment those who get these emails from the blog, to exclude those of you in Canada.)
This is following up my earlier blog post http://www.software4nonprofits.com/blog/2013/02/donation-receipts-and-intangible-religious-benefit/, and yesterday’s email to all users in the U.S.A. about this.
Having done more research, I’m less sure that a change is needed to the disclaimer about no goods or services being provided in return for the donation, even for churches. One of you was kind enough to find the actual court case decision for me, and it makes no mention of a requirement for such changed wording. But many commentators on the web do seem to think it would be necessary or helpful.
So, I’ve created version 3.48 Beta1, and uploaded it as usual to www.software4nonprofits.com/pretest.htm, with the following changes:
| · | Added new options for users with a Receipt Style of “U.S.A.” in the Maintenance -> Receipt Options window, for whether donors receive “intangible religious benefits” for their donations, which then affects the wording on the receipts. |
| · | For mail-merge receipts for users with a Receipt Style of “U.S.A.” in the Maintenance -> Receipt Options window, there is a new mail-merge field available, ReligiousBenefits, which can be used to determine whether to include some variant wording in the receipts. |
| · | In the Receipt -> Reprint Range window, added a checkbox that can be used for marking all of the reprinted receipts as “Corrected”, when that is appropriate. |
If any of you have a bit of time and interest to try out the new changes, and perhaps read the updated Help sections, and let me know what you think, before I release this to everyone in the next couple of days, that would be great.
By the way, that third point would allow for those users who do feel it is necessary to send out corrected 2012 receipts, with the new wording about “intangible religious benefits”, to all of their donors. Without it, there’s no way to get the receipts all marked “Corrected”, because before that only applied if you changed something about the donations included in the receipt.
In my email to all users in the U.S.A. that I will send out about this in a couple of days, I will give a few web references about this issue, and make it clear that I cannot make the decision for them about whether to make changes to their wording, or to send out corrected receipts. They will have to do their own research, and/or consult their organization’s lawyer or accountant. I think it would be a complete mistake for me to try to give them authoritative advice on this matter.
Thank you in advance for any comments and/or testing results!
Software4Nonprofits DONATION Blog 