Handling Holiday Auction Gifts

Auctions are a popular part of holiday fundraising and festivities. People are often looking for gifts and a charitable donation while they’re marking off items on their holiday list creates a great way to raise funds and provide value to your donors. Auctions also provide a way for local businesses to promote themselves and do good in the local community. Once the auction is over, how do you enter in the money raised from the auction?

The good news is that auction gifts can be entered in the same way you input regular donations into your database with just a few adjustments. First, use an appropriate motivation code. On gifts, the motivation code is what encouraged someone to give. Thus, if you’re operating a holiday auction, perhaps as part of a banquet or gala, then the auction, and the item they purchased, are the motivating factors.

However while a general donation is most often 100% tax deductible, an auction item often isn’t. There is a value to the item won, and this value is subtracted from the total auction to get the net gift. Don’t worry. FundRaiser handles net gifts by allowing you to enter in the benefit amount (the value of the item) and the description (what the item is). These fields are conveniently included in the letter fields so you can provide a net gift.

Finally, you might want to include a note above and beyond the regular thank you letter. In the picture you can see the fields (benefit amount, benefit description, and merge notes) completed on the gift and how they’ll appear in our sample letter.

Auctions can be a great way to generate participation from your donors, as well as fun events for your organization to hold. Making sure those gifts are entered into FundRaiser isn’t that different from entering in regular gifts, and with the tools built into FundRaiser, is easy to do. We wish you all the success with your holiday fundraising efforts.

If you'd like more help on editing or creating thank you letters, we welcome you to contact FundRaiser Technical Support at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 800-543-4131 or register for our Word Processing and Mail Merge class.