We send a thank you letter to all business that donate Gift Cards or merchandise. The letter specifically states what they donated so they can use it as proof for their taxes. Since we use it directly as prizes (for an event) we don't count it as income or anything, but we do track what we received from whom & its filed in the event file.
Hope that helps.
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Sorry, I was very tired when I read the post. Pretty plain when I re-read it. DUH !!!!!!!!!
Our Fundraiser Coordinator provides a letter explaining what the donation is for (fall festival,etc). Speaking from personal experience, documentation is a good thing. I have been asked some strange questions about what the PTO does with "our donations".
CapeDad - I take your question to mean how would you treat gift certificates that a business donates to your group - to be used for raffles, prizes, whatever.
I guess I would recommend that a letter be sent to the donor regardless. That way, the business doesn't need to worry come tax time and your group has a history of all donations received and not just those over a certain dollar amount. Besides, you're probably sending a Thank You letter anyway. In it, it's easy enough to include a description/value of the certificates.
I'm big on documentation so I err on the side of over documenting.
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Not sure I understand the question. Is your PTO donating gift certificates ???
Our PTO requires a receipt for just about everything. There are a very few times when an incidence has occured that we would not have a receipt. In that case it is well documented what the check was written for.