Anonymous Contribution Request

[MWH]

Several of our staff members are missionaries and raise support. Each time we complete a payroll, each staff member receives a Monthly Contributions Total Report, so that they can keep track of their donors and communicate accordingly. Someone is wanting to give anonymously to one staff member, is there anyway to enter this as an anonymous gift, yet the individual still receive the contribution on their tax statement at the end of the year?

[NeilZ]

Several of our staff members are missionaries and raise support. Each time we complete a payroll, each staff member receives a Monthly Contributions Total Report, so that they can keep track of their donors and communicate accordingly. Someone is wanting to give anonymously to one staff member, is there anyway to enter this as an anonymous gift, yet the individual still receive the contribution on their tax statement at the end of the year?

FWIW ... if people are donating directly in support of an individual, this donation is NOT tax deductable per IRS rules. If you are reporting this as tax deductable, the church is in violation of the law and could lose its tax free charity status.

From IRS Pub 526 (2014) page 7:
Contributions to Individuals
You cannot deduct contributions to specific in­dividuals, including the following.
...
Expenses you paid for another person who provided services to a qualified organiza­tion. Example.
Your son does missionary work. You pay his expenses. You cannot claim a deduction for your son's unreim­bursed expenses related to his contribu­tion of services.

While this example uses a parent paying for a son, the IRS considers contributions going directly to the support of a person as non-deductible. Since you say that the persons are considered employees and (I assume) given a paycheck, you could also be accused of 'laundering money' for a tax avoidance scheme.

If the contributions go into the general fund out of which these missionaries are paid a salary, then I would stop giving out individual lists of donor names, and would not enter any sort of specific designation when entering such donations.

The other alternative is to continue to list each donation for the employee to use, but no longer show these contributions as tax deductible on the Contributions Statement.

That said, there is no way you can enter an anonymous gift, yet give any one person the credit as you have to enter a contributor's envelope number so the donation is credited to that number.