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I'm planning on putting up a collection box for a local chartity. I think I've got good plans for a secure box, which I'll plan on emptying every night.
But what do you do with the money when you empty the box?
- Do you drop off wads of cash every day at the charity office?
- Do you deposit the money in to your own checking account and write a check to the charity?
- Do you open a seperate checking account, in your own name, specifically for the charity?
This was our first year collecting. We also emptied the box every night and kept the money locked up in the house. There was a lot of change. At the end of the month I took everything to the bank and they ran it through the counter and gave us a bankers check at no charge. We then presented the check to the charity. We collected $1,100. I imagine some of the people here that collect much more will make deposits so as not to have too much in the house.
I don't live in a high crime area so we feel pretty safe here......so far....
It's important that you keep yourself above even the appearance of impropriety.
You should keep a daily log of how much cash, check and change you remove.
DO NOT co-mingle the charity's money with your personal funds.
Either give the charity the donations directly (best choice) or deposit them in a separate account and draw a cashier's check from it.
Get a receipt from the charity whenever you hand-over the donations.
It's a bit of a hassle and we know that you're trying to do the charity a favor but you don't want someone accusing you of skimming and ruin it for everyone. A little extra caution will keep you looking good.
____________________ Officially designated one of "Those People". Cashier at Fremont CA Wal*Mart, 12/1/07.
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness." Attributed to Dave Barry
Entropy wrote: It's important that you keep yourself above even the appearance of impropriety.
You should keep a daily log of how much cash, check and change you remove.
DO NOT co-mingle the charity's money with your personal funds.
Either give the charity the donations directly (best choice) or deposit them in a separate account and draw a cashier's check from it.
Get a receipt from the charity whenever you hand-over the donations.
It's a bit of a hassle and we know that you're trying to do the charity a favor but you don't want someone accusing you of skimming and ruin it for everyone. A little extra caution will keep you looking good.
#2 is extremely important... makes you vulnerable for corruption even with the best of intentions.
BTW, have ever counted out $300 in ones and loose change? The bank teller has to count everything twice and it can be a 45 minute nightmare at the bank counting out what really isnt all that much money. Why not just collect in a big copy paper box and hand the loose wadded up money to the charity just the way it comes and let them deal with the counting and such. Another idea is open a web page, advertise it at your display and put links to donate directly to your charities. Most will take visa card payments of just a dollar or two and also get less of that "oh they are keeping a cut of the money for themselves, selfish @#%# they are."
We had 2 separate donation boxes, you know 3 boxes in 3 yards. One neighbor took a common collection for our electric bills, another for charities. We stand out there greeting people and we had a lot of people choose to donate to the electric bill and not the charity, not because they thought the money wouldnt make it to the charity, but they thought we'd personally take the income tax deduction, so somehow they felt better about direct donation to the electric bills fund (and often many of them told us they wanted us to have our electric covered so we continue to come back year after year after year with the display, in otherwords a vote of confidence).
Last edited on Thursday July 12th, 2007 07:46 pm by Joseph Ayo
Russ wrote: I'm planning on putting up a collection box for a local chartity. I think I've got good plans for a secure box, which I'll plan on emptying every night.
I am taking donations for a charity for the first time this year also. If you don't mind, please share your ideas on the collection box.
Anybody use a mailbox for a Charity Box? I was looking at lowes today and saw this one.
It looked pretty solid, but I was surprised that I could still squeeze my arm through the slot and touch the bottom of the box. What a terrible design I thought and it was $110. No thanks. If I could get my arm to touch the bottom, I am sure some skinny teenager could clean it out.
I was thinking about getting a normal heavy duty mail box and then somehow locking the front door and cut out a little slit that people can slide money through. Anybody have any pictures of mailboxes they have used for Charity Boxes?
Thanks.
-Richard
Last edited on Monday September 24th, 2007 05:27 am by RichardH
I have been using the Mailsafe Lockable Security Mailbox from Home depot for $65.00. My 12 year old can't seem to get his hand within 6 inches of the bottom while trying to reach in. It has such a short depth to the back of the box that your arm can't quite make the turn down to the bottom. I have tried many ways to retrieve items from the inside but just can't seem to retrieve items near the bottom. I empty the contents each night so as not to let the donations pile up high enough to actually touch anything.
Man I searched and searched for the post back about this time last year I made about our donation box but cant seem to find it. We bought a mail box from Lowes last year that worked great for us. It has a flip top lid so you dont have to worry about the elements and it also was deep enough so that as soon as someone dropped the money into it you couldnt try to pull it back out. Ok that sounds bad, not that I wanted to make sure they couldnt get there money back, I wanted to make sure the next person that came up didnt try to get it. LOL.
Now to make sure someone wasnt going to just walk off with the whole box, I put a 3' tall fence post upright in a five gallon bucket and poured concrete around it. Then when I mounted the mail box onto the post I made sure the nuts on the U-bolt were on the inside of the box. If someone was going to steal the box they were going to have to work pretty hard to get it.
