Okay, I think we’re prepared for some of that, will have to work on the rest. But I was thinking more along the lines of when an amount of money comes in like this again, how do I tell if it’s a grant or a donation?
I don’t know of any “grants” that will just come to you - you need to apply and seek them out.
“Donations”, on the other hand, do/may come out of thin air (possibly no/minimal effort required on your part to cause them). That’s what I meant by “from the skies”. You can ask/solicit for donations, but it is well understood that they are “donations” - no stipulations/conditions.
Again, the big difference is that grants have applications where they will spell out all the terms up front. By applying, you are agreeing to abide by the conditions if you win the grant - like signing a contract.
Another way to maybe look at it:
- donations: check first, possibly accompanied by “wish list” stipulations (but not binding)
- grants: apply - win - then check comes. Conditions agreed to at application time.
I feel for the OP, having been on small NP boards and so forth. Right now, I am enmeshed in the committees for a special town project, and for three years the donations have been free and easy and the planning cheerful. Now that the series of events is on us, many of the donors are post-hoccing strings and requirements and demands, and the usual committee members who fuss about pointless details are in high gear.
Volunteer-based, donation-driven work has its really, really sucky side. You have to care enough about the purpose to climb over some real turd-mountains.
Yes, I was kind of thinking that, too. Someone else on the board said he emailed the donor to get clarification but I haven’t heard anything back. In fact, my email is chirping crickets today, so for all I know the discussion is continuing offline, or at least not copied to me.
Thanks, that’s very helpful. I’ll remember it going forward.
Yep! Thanks for the empathy. Usually the goal is well worth the hassle, but sometimes things even out and you start to think “I don’t have to put up with this crap!”
I don’t agree with this.
Civil law is not my strong suit, I admit, but as I recall, when the gift and the conditions are delivered so close to the same time, the gift is still a restricted gift, and the organization is bound to use the gift as specified or return it – especially in this case, where the donor’s transmittal letter is a separate instrument from the Paypal mechanism by which the gift is actually made.
I am very curious to know what legal principles Hello Again is relying upon. To my memory, the circumstances described above create a restricted gift.
I don’t think that’s correct. The idea of “restricted donations” is pretty common, and as I understand it, the restrictions are binding. In general, the donation is accompanied by a restriction, whether on the check’s memo line or as a letter accompanying the donation. This case is interesting, because the email presumably arrived after the donation did, but it sounds like it came pretty soon after the donation–maybe on the same day as the donation? I don’t know if there’s case law determining whether such a contribution is restricted or unrestricted.
That said, even if you can make the legal case that it’s unrestricted, it strikes me as terrible practice to accept a contribution that the donor intended to be restricted and put it toward general funds, especially a contribution this big. Given the legal gray area, the donor could easily raise a stink, either in court or in the media or just in th local community of animal lovers, and it could severely harm your nonprofit. As I see it, you’ve got three reasonable choices:
- Thank the donor but politely return the money, telling him that you can’t currently comply with his request.
- Thank the donor and comply with his request.
- Thank the donor, explain the difficulties involved in complying with his request, and negotiate a compromise. If you can’t find a compromise both parties agree to, go for options 1 or 2.
I’m not a lawyer, but I did manage contributions for a medium-sized (budget around $2 million annually, IIRC) humane society for a few years, and restricted contributions were definitely something we took seriously.
Oh, and one more thing. That part where you’re thinking of resigning from the board because your feelings are hurt? Don’t be that person. There’s enough ridiculous drama in the world of animal welfare without adding to it.
Edit: Dammit, ninja’ed by a real lawyer! :shakes fist at Bricker
Does the donation restriction need to be reasonable? As noted, fulfilling the restriction might cost more than the amount of the donation.
To try to be clear, I wasn’t thinking of resigning because my feelings were hurt. It was because I felt that they did not respect my credibility (or authority?, not sure which is applicable here) with financial matters despite being the treasurer, and instead of engaging me in a mature discussion about the issue just tried to shut me up. Also the way that other person quickly moved the money when I tried to discuss it implied she didn’t trust me - if you can’t trust the person who has access to your finances, you have a problem. I conduct myself with professionalism at all times… okay so yeah, in that respect they did offend me.
Good point. Also the donor’s restrictions were not clearly outlined and left much up the imagination. That’s what spurred me to suggest a contract. Although now I see it was wrong, but as a very detail-oriented software engineer who has seen things left open to interpretation go wildly wrong, I wanted clarity in the details.
Why the heck would you hire an untrained person then pay for his training? Hire some guy who already has his certification. 10 000 is still going to get eaten up fast paying even a minimal part time salary.
When I wrote that, it was before I learned that the conditions arrived almost contemporaneously with the donation. My impression was that they followed after by a notable margin. If that had been true, I don’t think they would create a conditional gift where delivery of the funds had already occurred (delivery and acceptance by one with authority to accept the gift), but it’s certainly debatable in the particular interesting fact circumstances.
Let me emphasize that I did not at any time advocate taking the money and applying it to the general fund. Only that the reasons not to do that are not legal reasons.
I also agree that a donation can be restricted, but not after the fact . A memo line restriction, for example, is not after the fact.
Oh yes, the joy of donations with strings attached. A check with a note to spend it on dog food…great! Someone can go to the big box store and buy a bunch of kibble. A check with a note to spend it on good dog food. Waitwut? Everyone has their own opinion as to what good dog food is.
Many donations with strings attached come with unreasonable demands. Sometimes pointing out how the request just isn’t doable is enough to allow the donator to understand the problem.
Perhaps a nice email to the donor explaining that as an all volunteer group who runs on donations, there wouldn’t really be enough money to keep the now well trained dog-trainer. Perhaps also point out other options, ie: As you might know, Christy and Tracy are spending over 20 hours a week each working with the dogs and they have both expressed interest in attending X classes which cost $X. Could we use your very kind donation to pay for class as well as their gas?
Also, Jane who is a PetStore dog trainer would volunteer more often, but can’t afford the child care. Would it be acceptable for us to use some of your very kind donation to pay for her child care so we would have another dog trainer working with the dogs more often?
Again, thank you so much for the lovely donation and thank you so much for caring so much about the animals we are trying to help.
On the other hand, sometimes bluntness works. When I left my rescue group to move to another state and get married, I sent them a large check with a note to spend it on fixing feral cats. I promptly got an email saying something like “Flatlined, you idiot, you were our only feral cat wrangler. You know that. What do you think we are going to do with this money if we can’t spend it on what is needed?” My email back was all full of :smack::smack::smack: Yeah, I’m an idiot and I did know that. Do what you want with it.
My father had a medium-sized fortune and asked each of his children to research a charity that might deserve some of it. His main condition: it must be of continuing benefit to the recipient, not just a one-time thing. Makes sense. What this donor is requiring will mean a continuing expense that may or may not fit into your mission as you see it. kinda like a coupon good for $1000 off a Mercedes.
As soon as I saw the $10,000 I knew it was going to be with strings attached and you’re very wise to want to talk to a lawyer first . I would also do a background check on the guy , I am thinking if he does not like that way you are using ‘his’
$10,000 he could try to files some bogus complains about your shelter .
I hope you do not resign b/c the animals would be the one to lose out the most.
I don’t think you rained on anyone parade and it’s a damn shame the people you work with can’t see that looking out of the best interest of the animals and shelter .
I just don’t feel good about this guy , it looks like he has a hidden agenda and I would be very careful in dealing with him.
Oh that’s a little silly. The guy has been reliably giving 5000 a year and figures if he’s going to make some demands he should bump it up. There’s no reason to assume secret reasons, he wants the place to be a little more professional. He likely has no idea just how much money it takes to jump to that level.
So let say the dogs get trained , and people that adopt the does not follow up with the training . Do they have to give the dog back ? I see a lot of dog owners in my city and it looks like the dog is taking their owners for a walk not the other way around.
So? The donor is asking for some expertise at the shelter. That may or not be doable. Do you think it’s remotely realistic that he’ll be annoyed that there’s still some bad owners out there so “gimme my money back!”?
Welcome to the world of doing good, where egos run amok. A lot of us have horror stories, I volunteered for a non-profit and raised tens of thousands of dollars, only to be brushed aside when a Wonder Boy showed up with New Ideas. He lasted a few weeks and was gone. Of course, they suddenly rethought and decided that the Old Ideas had merit after all, but I was pissed (ego, I’m sure) and told them to take a hike.
I’m not an attorney, but the lawyer who taught our engineering / business law class drummed into our heads the conditions which makes contracts valid. In the US, other than for real estate (and perhaps some other exceptions) contracts don’t have to be written and they don’t have to declared as a “contract.” Going by memory from several decades ago, some of the conditions include an offer and an acceptance (a meeting of the minds, IIRC) and compensation. The compensation doesn’t have to be cash. A person can offer to give money to someone to lose weight, for example, and the weight lose is seen as compensation.
So, you have a contract with the donor. It’s just that you don’t have a written contract and you don’t have agreements concerning what would happen if the contingencies occurred.
My extremely amateur advice: Communicate, communicate, communicate. Have someone, you or the president write back with all of your concerns. Ask the donor for “advice.” Reading quickly through the OP, it looks like they want you to use the money for that purpose, but it’s not clear that they are demanding that you get the performance. e.g., you need to spend the money on training, not that it’s a requirement that the trained person stay.
Despite horror stories about the legal system, it’s pretty fair. Emails showing that you expressed your concerns and that the person acknowledged them will cover your ass.
A lot of places have free legal advice for small problems like this. You may want to just ask.
You do not know us very well if you think we actually believe our opinions to be humble.
How much are the other key individuals on board with your goals?
You have three problems here. First, is the one you’re asking about. Second, if you don’t find a way to make this happen, you’ve just lost one of your major donors. Third, your board doesn’t see this.
Really good causes are a dime a dozen. If they don’t see this as a come-to-Jesus moment, then start to look around.
It’s not just a matter of hurt feelings. If I were her, treasurer and only officer of the non profit, I would hand my resignation too upon seeing a large amount of money being moved by another random board member. Doubly so if the debate about the money is taking place deliberatly behind my back, as it seems to be the case.
IMHO, the workings of this non profit are too informal. Even in small NGOs, this is a recipe for problems. There shouldn’t be someone “considered as president” without actually being president, who can handle what money for what purpose should be clarified, significant decisions should be taken during actual board meetings when everybody is present.
IOW, in this case, the money should have stayed untouched until the next board meeting, where the issue of whether or not to accept the gift and how to use it should have been discussed and voted face to face by all board members, after which the treasurer would have handled the funds.
She (the founding board member that I consider “president”) deliberately set the board up that way to try to prevent drama that she saw at another organization set up classically with president, secretary, VP, etc. She felt that if nobody had a title, nobody could pretend to be more important than the others. I liked that, but now I am leaning in agreement with you that it’s too informal. Also it doesn’t prevent any drama since we still seem to have high school behavior going on.
I definitely agree with you that it’s too informal. We don’t have any regular board meetings, just ad-hoc conference calls roughly about twice a year. Everything is handled with casual email conversations, so of course is hit or miss.
Well, with the frame of reference above (too much informality), I can say that they’re on board with it in the sense of “yay, more money” but don’t understand or care about any ramifications or the extent of the work required. One nice thing with this organization is that I feel I have a lot of autonomy. But I think I need to educate them more about what it means to accept large donations and grants. I have been talking about how much work applying for and managing grants is, that I’ll be pulling some volunteers in to help me, and how I have defined programs that people can donate specifically to. They’re good with that, but they do tend to focus on repeating old methods to bring money in, specifically selling tshirts, pestering* past donors by email and Facebook, and other nickel and dime “dog wash” type strategies. I’m trying to be more strategic and looking for ways to bring in larger amounts.
- Absolutely past donors are very likely to donate again, so this isn’t a bad strategy. The issue I have with it is that the majority of those donors are $5 donations. You can only beat so many pennies out of people who can only afford to donate $5. I appreciate them very much, but would like to give them a breather from our barrages of money requests - and work on methods that bring in larger amounts for a little while.
I am also the treasurer of a small non-profit. I have sat on several boards, and it is VERY unusual for the treasurer’s advice on financial matters to be treated with so little respect and deference. I would not want to be a treasurer on a board where my opinion was not at least given serious consideration.
That said–it is always better to phrase things in terms of a recommendation that is open for discussion. I can’t tell from what you write, but I wonder if you sounded like your opinions on the matter were law, and not open for discussion, which is guaranteed to generate bad blood. As a pretty opinionated person myself, this is a talent I have had to cultivate. Boards are about collaborative decision-making, and it’s important to approach it that way, both in your expressions and in your attitude toward the process. On our board, we disagree often–but we do it respectfully and with the goal of finding consensus.
Regardless of why this happened, it may be very difficult to continue as treasurer on this board.
EDIT: Just read some of your later posts. The informality of this non-profit is a huge concern. It doesn’t sound like a very stable organization. I would be hesitant to sit on a board with no official officers, or to give them money.