response 68 of 72:

Apr 2 16:46 UTC 1999

The treasurer did not make this policy, it was voted on by the board members.
The reason for sending out the receipts was not as a thank-you note, it was
due to the fact that Sue Dodea was insisting that grex, as a nonprofit, was
required to send out paper receipts for every single donation.  She probably
misinterpreted the IRS rule about written statements for amounts over $75 that
were partly in payment for goods or services.  The board members were
concerned about the IRS auditing grex.  This was not meant as a way to thank
donors but as a way to ensure that the IRS would not bother grex.  
        Since it is a great deal of work to write out 100 or so paper receipts,
they decided on a compromise situation of sending out receipts only to people
donating over the membership amount.  (I don't follow the logic of this one).
        It has since turned out (people seem to agree with me on this one) that
the IRS does not require nonprofits to write out receipts for all donations
- as confirmed by the IRS itself, National Charities Bureau, and United Way.

        What is required is that donors who either donate $250 or up or who
do not receive cancelled checks back have some other written proof of their
donations.  Everyone seems to agree on this one, too.

        I don't understand how people who donate under $75 are any less likely
that people who donate over this amount to be (a) itemizing and (b) not
receiving cancelled checks back.  Or why people who donate over $75 need a
paper thank you but people who donate less than this need only an email thank
you.  Or why people need to be thanked at all for contributing to an
organization which benefits them directly and would not exist without their
donations.  The cutoff point may have had something to do with that $75 rule
(for donations partly for goods and services) but that has turned out to be
irrelevant.
        If Mark is going to be writing out a certain number of receipts, and
has stated a clear preference (see 0) for not writing them to everyone,
wouldn't it make more sense to write them to people who need them, or want
them (for whatever reason), and keep a list of such people?  He would only
have to be informed once, nobody would have to bother telling him every year,
and donors of smaller amounts would not be treated differently than those
people who happen to have more disposable income.

        If someone can give me a good reason why people donating larger amounts
are either more in need of written proof of donations or more deserving of
paper thanks, I will drop this issue, but the $75 cutoff and the vote to
automatically send out receipts in the first place seem to be based on a
misinterpretation of an IRS rule.  Either send paper to everyone (which Mark
said he did not want to do) or only to people who need it.
        Could someone else who attended that board meeting give their
interpretation of what the actual reasoning was behind the vote?

        I am not trying to annoy people, I am simply trying to point out that
the policy decision seems to have been based on erroneous information.  And
that the result, if you agree that paper receipts are something valuable that
will make people happy, is to make only richer people happy, and grex is
supposed to be democratic.
        Do all the over-$75 donors other than me have mortgages and most of
the other donors rent?  Is this group really statistically more likely to be
in need of the paper receipts?  Maybe there is some information I am missing.

        I apologize if I have made some error in my reasoning, please point
it out, but I really think the current policy was made on the basis of
incorrect information.