Recording Donations

You can access the Donors screen by opening the Development tab in the Keystone ribbon and clicking Donors. Record all donations on the Donations tab located on the Donors screen.

When you enter a donation, it must be recorded for a specific donor. Each donor must already be in Keystone as a contact and have a Donors category assignment before their name will appear in the Donors screen.

If a donor does not appear among the list of donors on the Donors screen, either the donor’s contact record exists in Keystone but does not have a Donors category assigned to it or the donor does not exist at all yet in Keystone. Click the Add/Delete/Modify button on the Donors screen to determine which is the case.

If you find you need to add the Donors category to the contact, see the Categories Tab section. For more information about categories, see the Introduction to Categories section. If you need to add the contact, see the Adding Contacts to Your Database section for more information. You can add the Donors category to the contact at the same time you add them to your database.

You might want to include a contact named Anonymous with a category assignment of Donors/Other for recording anonymous donations.

To record a donation

Open the Development tab in the Keystone ribbon and click Donors.
The Donors screen opens.
Select the donor from the Name drop-down list at the top left corner of the screen.
If the donor you are looking for is not in the list, see above for how to add the donor to the list.
Select the Donations tab.
Go to the new record line.
Enter the details of the donation.

The Date field is used for the date on which the donation is recorded. A date is required to record the donation.
The Donor field contains which donor in the contact record made the gift.
If there is only one person in the contact record, then this value is 1 (for Person1). If there are two people in the contact, if the first person made the donation, the value is 1 (again, for Person1). If the second person made the donation, the value is 2 (for Person2). If both persons made the gift, the value should be Both.

If the contact is an organization or contains an organization name and the donation came from the organization, the value should be Org.
The Payment Method (Pmt Mthd) field contains the type of transaction, as in cash, check, in-kind, etc.
The Amount field contains the value of the contribution received.
If the donation is an in-kind gift, the Amount field should contain your affiliate's internal value placed on materials or property received in the donation. This value is not reported on the receipt. In the case of in-kind gifts, the items received should be briefly listed in the Message field. (see below) The Message field may be exported for acknowledgement of the gift using mail merge.

For a contribution that came as part of a larger collected gift - such as from the United Way - for which you have a name and address of a donor but no detail about their specific gift amount, enter 0 here. Then select the FRA you set up for this collected donation in step g. below. This allows you to preserve the fact that the person did give money to your affiliate, even if you don't know how much.

If you receive a donation like this but only get a list of just the donors' names, it is strongly recommended that you do not enter those names as donors unless you have address information for them somewhere. Donor names without addresses have little or no value.
The Value of Goods and Services (VOGS) field identifies the value of that part of the contribution that is payment for goods and services and not a gift.
The Donations field is the cash value of the contribution.
- For in-kind contributions, this value is 0.
- For contributions that include goods and services, this is the amount of the gift less the value of those goods and services.
- For all other transactions, it is the full amount of the gift.
The FRA field identifies a Fundraising Activity with which the donation is associated. This field is optional.
If you select the FRA of a pledge that is active for this donor and the donor has more than one obligation outstanding, you may be presented with a screen asking you to select the obligation to which this donation should be assigned. For example, if the donor has not paid toward their Club Pledge for the last two houses, Keystone will ask you where you want to apply this particular donation. For more information, see the Introduction to Fundraising Activities section.

If you entered 0 in the Amount field for a gift that came as part of a collective donation - such as from the United Way - select the FRA you set up for that donation here. See step d. above for more information.
The DDA field identifies a Donor Directed Activity.
This is an activity where money is received as part of one fundraising activity but the donor requests that it be designated to a different FRA. This field is optional.

You can only enter a Donor Directed Activity if a fundraising activity has been entered in the FRA field. All Donor Directed Activities are existing Fundraising Activities. For more information, see the Introduction to Fundraising Activities section.
The External Message/In-Kind field's purpose is to provide information for use in acknowledgements.
This information can be used for a description of an in-kind gift or a for thank you statement. When selected, a prompt is shown in the status bar in the lower-left corner of the Keystone screen that says Thank you for the gift....

Keystone expects you to complete this sentence by entering something similar to of the window frames, of the blitz lunch, and so forth for in-kind donations; in memory of Jane Smith, on behalf of Darius Jackson, etc. for thank you statements.

The External Message/In-kind field is for external use. The Internal Notes field (below) is for internal use only.
The Internal Notes field is a memo field and is used to record any internal comment related to the donation.
The Ltr field is used to indicate the merge letter you would like to use for acknowledgement of a donation.
The standard merge letters that come with Keystone are numbered 0 through 5. While the subject of these standard merge letters must remain constant, the content of these merge letters can be edited to meet your affiliate needs.

Keystone attempts to automatically assign this letter number based on the information you enter for a donation. However, you can change this assignment if you wish.

You can create new custom acknowledgment merge letters (using a letter number greater than 5) that you can assign to specific FRAs. If you do this, when you record that a donation came in as part of that specific FRA, Keystone will assign that custom acknowledgement letter to that donation. You can also manually assign custom letters to any donation.

For more information about these letters, or about assigning new letters, refer to the Documents/Templates tab in Affiliate Setup. For more information about creating letters, see the Creating or Editing a Template with Microsoft Word section.
The Ack Date field indicates when a donation was acknowledged.
Printing a receipt from the Donations tab automatically fills in this date. The Acknowledgement Letters report on the Report screen (located at Development > Donations > Acknowledgement Letters) also lets you record the acknowledgement data here automatically.

Check the No Acknowledgements check box if the donor does not wish to receive acknowledgement letters.

If you need to cancel the entry before it is completed, click the Cancel Entry button.