FundSvcs Community

Good day, all, hope everyone is safe and warm (depending on your locale).

I know John Taylor was generous to share his annual IRS review yesterday.  However, as is often the case, there's a variation to common questions.  Here goes: we have donors who have annually hosted an event in their home state that is tangentially related to our org.  They have always organized, hosted, and paid out of pocket for the event, we do not provide guest lists and prospects/donors are not the typical audience; we have never given them GIK credit.

Somehow¹ we are now being asked to pay for the event expenses after they have estimated the costs and sent us a "gift" in advance.  My primary concern here is the audience still has not changed--this is not an org sponsored event, it is not a fundraising event, we aren't really doing any of the work for the event.  This is an event for scholarship recipients that are coming to our org on scholarships the family has funded.  Before we get too far down the line, I'd appreciate anyone confirming this truly can be a receipted GIK situation.  I've scoured Pub 526 and 1771 and my CASE global reporting and can't find a similar scenario. It seems a little squishy to me but is the first time we've had this issue, so I may be off base.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

¹ The "somehow" is two fundraisers spoke with the donors yesterday, not a development operations professional. :)

Good day, all, hope everyone is safe and warm (depending on your locale).

I know John Taylor was generous to share his annual IRS review yesterday.  However, as is often the case, there's a variation to common questions.  Here goes: we have donors who have annually hosted an event in their home state that is tangentially related to our org.  They have always organized, hosted, and paid out of pocket for the event, we do not provide guest lists and prospects/donors are not the typical audience; we have never given them GIK credit.

Somehow¹ we are now being asked to pay for the event expenses after they have estimated the costs and sent us a "gift" in advance.  My primary concern here is the audience still has not changed--this is not an org sponsored event, it is not a fundraising event, we aren't really doing any of the work for the event.  This is an event for scholarship recipients that are coming to our org on scholarships the family has funded.  Before we get too far down the line, I'd appreciate anyone confirming this truly can be a receipted GIK situation.  I've scoured Pub 526 and 1771 and my CASE global reporting and can't find a similar scenario. It seems a little squishy to me but is the first time we've had this issue, so I may be off base.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

¹ The "somehow" is two fundraisers spoke with the donors yesterday, not a development operations professional. :)