Hello everyone,
Long story short -- we have a donor with a multi-year pledge towards an annual award. While renaming confusion occurred with the annual award because it had the term "diversity" in it per the donor, they bypassed their pledge payment/gift and paid for the student's travel expenses including flight ticket and luggage directly. I explained to our Advancement team that this is not considered a charitable donation or tax-deductible since our qualified organization never had control over the funds and although the donors intention were to benefit a student of ours it was directly used for the student for their travel expenses instead of going through the proper process/channels of donating to the award at our organization and then at our discretion selecting the student, etc.
Now the donor is asking to resend their pledges to us - assuming meant rescind. And our Advancement lead is asking if we are able to soft credit the donor towards their original multi-year pledge.
I explained we might be able to offer a soft credit for the donation for internal recognition and fundraising purposes as I do believe that it left up to the institution's discretion/SOPs, but it would not be a tax-deductible contribution for the donor. Also, that we can look at reducing the donor's pledge with the $600 remaining and document why the donor is declining to pay it, but I think soft credit could make it messy and we want it to be clear to Advancement team and auditors, etc. that this was not recorded as a gift.
Best practices for this? Or any legal publications, etc.?
(I would like to add that I found out this donor is the head of the university department that would have been in charge of selected the student for the award)
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