Each January, email constituents a year-end giving statement that lists all of their support from the previous calendar year.
Giving statements help constituents take all their tax credits. They’re also opportunity to strengthen relationships with your constituents:
Remind donors of their past support.
Provide customer service. When you send a year-end giving statement, donors don’t have to store and find multiple tax receipts from your organization.
Show gratitude to donors for their generosity.
This article explains what giving statements are and what information they include. If you’re ready to email giving statements to your constituents, read Email Year-End Giving Statements.
What Are Year-End Giving Statements?
A giving statement is a list of all the support from a donor or household over one calendar year. Giving statements are PDF files that constituents can open in web browsers or PDF readers.
A year-end giving statement can substantiate that your organization received tax-deductible charitable contributions. It also documents that you are a 501(c)(3) organization eligible to provide such deductions. For information about IRS recordkeeping and substantiation rules, read Charitable Contributions: Substantiation
and Disclosure Requirements on the IRS website.
What Information Appears in Year-End Giving Statements?
To help constituents understand the breadth of their support, giving statements include different types of giving: monetary donations, in-kind donations, volunteer hours, and indirect donations (soft credits).
Each giving statement shows total giving for a constituent or household. If the giving statement is for a household, totals include contributions from all household members.
Giving statements are organized by these sections:
Tax summary — Monetary donations (one-time donations, recurring donation payments, and pledge payments). If your subscription includes membership management, membership dues payments also appear here. Refunded transactions don’t appear on giving statements.
In-kind donations — Non-cash gifts of goods or services. Constituents can deduct in-kind donations on their tax returns if they determine the fair market monetary value and follow IRS guidelines. The list of in-kind donations include a description for each in-kind donation, but not the fair market value.
Volunteer hours — Total number of volunteer hours based on interactions with the Volunteer Activity purpose. If you have the Bloomerang Volunteer integration, interactions synced from Bloomerang Volunteer have the Volunteer Activity purpose. You can also manually add interactions with this purpose.
To include this section in giving statements, you must turn on the Include Soft Credits and Volunteer Hours option. This option is on by default, but you can turn it off.Indirect donations — Soft credits on donations. Your organization might use soft credits to track monetary gifts made through donor-advised funds (DAFs), family foundations, workplace giving programs, and other indirect channels. This section assures your donors that you received these indirect gifts without mixing them with their tax-deductible payments.
To include this section in giving statements, you must turn on the Include Soft Credits and Volunteer Hours option. This option is on by default, but you can turn it off.
Sections appear only if the constituent or household has giving activity for that section. For example, if the constituent or household has only one-time donations, only the Tax Summary section appears on the giving statement.
Can I Customize Year-End Giving Statements?
Your organization's name and address appear at the beginning of giving statements. To change this information, update your organization settings.
To add or edit your organization’s logo and EIN, or to exclude soft credits and volunteer hours, update the Giving Statement settings.
How Do I Email Year-End Giving Statements to Constituents?
You can:
Send a mass email to multiple constituents.
To set this up, you add the Prior-Year Giving Statement merge field in your email message. This merge field adds a link to the constituent’s unique giving statement. The link never expires. Read about how to send a mass email.Download a giving statement for an individual constituent.
To download the statement, go to the constituent’s profile. After you download the statement, you can email it outside of Bloomerang CRM. Read about how to download a giving statement.
Tip: To mail a letter rather than send an email, read Mail Year-End Tax Receipt Letters. A letter is a good option for donors without a valid email address in Bloomerang CRM.