We try to record every bike that's donated to us, we do this in two ways. The first way is we ad a hash mark to our daily log, this allows us to know how many bikes were donated in a day, week, month and year. Last year we brought in 1,600 bikes. The second way is to give the bike/parts donor a tax receipt where they fill out the estimated value. This is good because we get their contact info and can follow up with them and encourage them to become members.

Both of these methods are important because it gives us a way to prove we have community support.

Ride On!
Rich

rachael spiewak wrote:

Hi, everyone.

Gotta bookkeeping question for you. How do you keep track of your in kind donations, especially used items? Do you log every item? How do you assign value? Help me finish this sentence:

The annual cost of stocking Awesome Bike Co-op's community bike repair shop is $X. Funding sources and amounts include:
$X - self-generated funds
$X - foundation funds
$X - in kind donations

I can assign numbers to everything but the in kind donations because we haven't tracked them, and a grant application is asking for this information. It looks like it would be good practice anyway. On the other hand, donations kind of come and go. People drop off handlebars and pick up a saddle with a total lack of formality. Should we exclude trades and stick only to the more formal donations (a box of parts, for example)? It would be easiest to restrict it to bike donations.

Thoughts?

Thanks!
Rachael

--
Sopo Bicycle Cooperative
404-425-9989
www.sopobikes.org
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