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Record an In-Kind Donation

Goal: Log a non-cash gift — goods, services, vehicles, materials — through Ayuna's in-kind lifecycle so it shows up correctly on books, in reports, and on year-end donor acknowledgments.

When to use the in-kind flow​

Use this flow for:

  • Building materials donated to a project
  • Tools, appliances, furniture donated to the ReStore
  • Vehicles donated for resale
  • Professional services donated (architecture, legal, accounting)
  • Land donations (with appropriate appraisal)

Do not use for:

  • Cash, check, ACH — use Record a One-Time Gift
  • Stock — use Stock as a payment method on the standard donation flow

The four-stage lifecycle​

In-kind donations move through four statuses:

  1. Received — recorded in Ayuna with description and donor identified
  2. Appraised — fair market value (FMV) recorded for accounting purposes
  3. Recorded — journal entry posted to the GL
  4. Disposed — final disposition captured (kept for use, sold, donated to another org, discarded)

Recording the donation​

Under Fundraising → In-Kind Donations, click Record In-Kind Donation. Capture:

  • Donor — individual or organization
  • Donation date — when the affiliate received the item
  • Category — drives Schedule M classification. Options include Vehicle, Real Estate, Securities, Equipment, Supplies, ReStore Product (goods donated for resale in the ReStore), Professional Services, Other Goods, and Other Services.
  • Description — clear enough that staff can identify the item later
  • Fair market value — the affiliate's estimate of the gift's value, or check No stated value to leave it blank (see below)
  • Fund — optional. Assign the gift to a specific fund (funding code) so it books to the right place — for example, routing home-build material donations and donated legal services to different codes. Leave it blank to fall back to the affiliate's default fund. The dropdown lists each active fund with its code.
  • Project — optional. Choose the construction project the gift supports — for example, a skid steer loaned for a build, lumber delivered to a site, or an electrician's donated labor. See Linking a gift to a project below.
  • Vehicle info (when applicable) — make/model/year/VIN/condition for vehicle donations

Save. The donation is now in Received status.

Linking a gift to a project​

When donated equipment, materials, or services go to a specific build, pick that build in the Project dropdown so the gift is tracked at the project level. Most ReStore goods belong to no project; leave the field on No project for those.

Linked gifts show up in two places:

  • On the Fundraising → In-Kind Donations list, the project name appears under the gift's description. Open Filters and choose a Project to see only the gifts for one build.
  • On the project's page (on the Fundraising tab in the advanced view), an In-Kind Donations card lists every gift linked to that project, with a count and total fair market value. Click Manage in-kind donations to jump to the in-kind list already filtered to that project.

You can link, change, or remove a gift's project at any time by editing the donation. The project isn't printed on the donor's receipt, so changing it never reissues a receipt.

Recording a gift with no stated value​

Some gifts arrive with no practical way to put a number on them — the classic case is a ReStore truckload of assorted furniture dropped at the dock. The donor, not the affiliate, is responsible for valuing donated property (IRS Pub. 561), and a charity should never assign a dollar figure it can't stand behind.

Check No stated value (value-free acknowledgment) when recording the gift. The Fair Market Value field disappears, and the donation is saved with no value. You can still generate and email the donor a tax acknowledgment — it describes the property and includes the required 501(c)(3) and "no goods or services" language, but the fair market value line is left blank for the donor to complete. This is the emailed equivalent of the paper acknowledgment ReStores hand out at the dock.

Value-free gifts show Not stated in the value column and are recorded in Received status. You can still edit one — correct the description or donor — and leave the Fair Market Value field blank to keep it value-free.

If your bookkeeper later assigns a value for your own records, you can enter it on the donation. Once the acknowledgment has been issued, that value is for your books only: the donor's acknowledgment keeps its blank line, is not reissued when you save, and stays value-free even if you choose Regenerate receipt. The donor values the gift, not the affiliate, so a figure you set is never presented as theirs.

Editing a donation​

Made a typo, need to correct the fair market value, or want to re-attribute the gift to the right donor? On the Fundraising → In-Kind Donations list, open the row's ⋯ menu and choose Edit donation. The same form reopens, prefilled with the current details.

You can update the donor, description, fair market value, fund, project, and vehicle details, then click Save Changes. Two fields are fixed once the donation is created and appear read-only here: the donation date and the category. If either of those is wrong, delete the record and re-record it. Changing the fair market value re-checks the IRS appraisal and Form 8283 thresholds automatically.

If a receipt was already generated, saving an edit that changes anything shown on it — the donor, description, fair market value, or vehicle details — automatically reissues the receipt: the old one is voided and a new receipt with a fresh number is created from the corrected details. Ayuna does not email the new receipt on its own; when you're ready, use Email receipt to donor from the row's ⋯ menu to send the corrected copy. In the rare case the automatic reissue fails, you'll see a warning after saving — use Regenerate receipt from the same menu, then email it.

Editing a donation requires the same permission as recording one; staff with view-only access won't see the Edit donation option.

Appraising​

The fair market value (FMV) is captured when you record the donation. For items above $5,000 the donor is responsible for obtaining a qualified appraisal; for routine goods an internal estimate based on comparable items is usually enough.

To log the appraisal, open the row's ⋯ menu on the Fundraising → In-Kind Donations list and choose Record appraisal. Enter the appraisal date, the appraiser's name, and (optionally) their credentials. Saving moves a still-Received donation to Appraised and clears it from the Appraisals Pending count at the top of the page. Attach the appraisal report itself under Documents (below).

Attaching supporting documents​

Every in-kind donation record has a Documents area for the paperwork that backs up the gift. On the Fundraising → In-Kind Donations list, open a donation's ⋯ menu and choose Documents to upload files and manage what's already attached. Typical documents include:

  • The donor's qualified appraisal report (needed for items valued above $5,000)
  • Photos of the donated item and its condition
  • Receipts, bills of sale, or title/registration paperwork (especially for vehicles)
  • The signed acknowledgment or Form 8283 donee copy you returned to the donor

Drag a file onto the upload area or click to browse. Ayuna accepts PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, text, and image files up to 20 MB each. Once uploaded, a document can be previewed in the browser, downloaded, or removed. Keeping the appraisal and disposition paperwork on the record itself means the backup is one click away at audit or year-end time — no digging through shared drives or email threads.

Uploading and deleting documents requires the same permission as editing in-kind donations; staff with view-only access can still open, preview, and download what's attached.

Generating the journal entry​

Generate a journal entry from the in-kind donation. This:

  • Posts to the appropriate fund and account in the GL
  • Moves the status to Recorded

Confirm with your accountant which expense / asset accounts the entry should hit. Most affiliates use a "Contributed Goods/Services Received" income account paired with an asset or expense account based on whether the item is held or used.

Disposition​

When the item leaves your possession, record disposition:

  • Kept for use — used in operations or a build (no proceeds)
  • Sold — usually at the ReStore; capture sale proceeds
  • Donated to other — passed to another nonprofit
  • Discarded — damaged or unusable

Status moves to Disposed.

Donor acknowledgment​

Send the donor an in-kind acknowledgment that:

  • Identifies the affiliate as a 501(c)(3)
  • Describes the item received
  • Does not state a dollar value (per IRS Pub 1771; valuation is the donor's responsibility)
  • Notes that no goods or services were provided in return

Ayuna can generate this for you: open the row's ⋯ menu and choose Generate receipt. You'll get an IRS-compliant PDF (Pub 561/526 language, FMV disclosure, and appraisal/vehicle notices where they apply). For gifts recorded with No stated value (see above), the fair market value line on the PDF is left blank for the donor to complete — everything else, including the emailing steps below, works the same way. Once it exists, the same menu offers View receipt, Download receipt, Email receipt to donor — which sends the PDF to the donor's email on file (you can change the recipient before sending) — and Regenerate receipt, which voids the current receipt and issues a fresh one from the donation's current details. Regeneration also happens automatically when you edit a receipted donation (see Editing a donation above), so Email receipt to donor always sends a receipt that matches the record. Generating the receipt also marks the donation's substantiation as sent. (The same receipts can be produced in bulk under Accounting → Compliance Reports.)

For donations valued by the donor at $500+, the donor needs Form 8283 Part A. For $5,000+, Part B with a qualified appraisal. They'll typically ask you to sign the form acknowledging receipt — sign only the donee section, never anything that asserts a value.

Vehicle donations specifically​

Vehicles have additional IRS requirements. The acknowledgment must be Form 1098-C compatible — describe the vehicle (year, make, model, VIN), date received, and either:

  • Statement that the vehicle was sold and the gross proceeds, OR
  • Statement of significant intervening use (e.g., the affiliate drove it for 12 months for materials transport)

Importing in-kind donations from another system​

If you're moving onto Ayuna from another database, in-kind gifts come across on the In-Kind Donations tab of the migration template (Administration → Data Migration → Download Template). Put non-cash gifts there, not on the Donations tab — the Donations tab is for cash, and it rejects any row without a positive dollar amount.

Each row needs a donation date, a description, and a donor. The donor can be any one of:

  • Contact ID or Email — matches a person on your Contacts tab or already in Ayuna (use Contact ID, the person's record id from your old system, for donors with no email address)
  • Organization — matched to an existing organization by name, created if it's new
  • Donor Name — free text, for gifts you don't want to create a record for (anonymous ReStore drop-offs, for example)

Gifts your old system never valued​

Legacy systems often logged that a donation arrived without ever recording what it was worth — this is especially common with years of ReStore drop-offs. Leave Fair Market Value blank or enter 0. Those rows import successfully with a value of zero, which preserves the donor, the date, and the history rather than discarding the gift. They arrive with status Received, so you can value them later through the normal appraisal step, and they're easy to find by filtering the in-kind list for a zero value.

A negative value fails the row, and so does the Vehicle category without a make, model, and year.

Two things to know before you import​

  • Category is optional. Blank becomes Other Goods. If your old system tagged ReStore goods, map them to ReStore Product so Schedule M reporting stays clean.
  • Campaign and Notes get appended to the item description, because in-kind records aren't linked to campaigns in Ayuna. You'll still be able to search for the campaign name, but in-kind gifts won't roll up into campaign totals.

Known gaps​

The in-kind flow covers the basic four-stage lifecycle, but there are workflows that aren't fully built yet:

  • Acceptance review — there's no "pending acceptance" status before "received" for items the affiliate may decline
  • Partial / split disposition — one in-kind record gets one disposition method; for bulk donations with mixed disposition, split into multiple records up-front
  • Schedule M aggregation — annual Schedule M numbers must be assembled manually from the category breakdown

Reporting​

The in-kind donations summary surfaces totals by category and by status. Year-end Schedule M numbers come from filtering by category and date range.