Donation Receipt Template & Bulk Generator

A 501(c)(3) donation receipt (also called a charitable contribution acknowledgment or nonprofit tax receipt) is the written record a tax-exempt organization gives a donor as proof of their gift. To be IRS-compliant under Publication 1771 it should include your organization's legal name, the donor's name, the gift date, the cash amount or a description of non-cash property, your EIN and 501(c)(3) status, and a statement about whether goods or services were provided in exchange. This free donation receipt template builds all of those in by default.

Donors need a contemporaneous written acknowledgment for any single contribution of $250 or more before they can claim the deduction - a bank record alone will not cut it. Separately, any quid pro quo gift over $75 (where the donor received goods or services in return) requires you to describe what they got and give a good-faith estimate of its value. Practically, most nonprofits receipt every gift regardless of size, because it is good stewardship and removes any doubt at tax time.

A per-gift receipt acknowledges a single donation and is best sent right after a gift comes in. An annual giving statement (or year-end tax statement) groups every gift a donor made during the tax year into one summary with totals, which you typically send in January. This generator does both from the same gift list - just flip the output mode. Many nonprofits use per-gift receipts during the year and a consolidated year-end statement for donors who gave more than once.

Describe the donated item or service, but do not state a dollar value. IRS rules put valuation on the donor, not the charity - so a compliant in-kind donation receipt names the property (for example, '6 desks and 12 chairs') and leaves the fair market value to the donor and their tax advisor. Choose the in-kind gift type in this tool and the receipt automatically swaps the amount for a description and adds the right language.

When a donor pays more than they receive - a $250 gala ticket that includes a $90 dinner, or a silent auction item won above its fair market value - only the difference is tax-deductible. Enter what the donor received and its value, and the generator subtracts it, prints the required goods-or-services disclosure, and shows the donor exactly how much of their gift counts. It pairs naturally with our silent auction bid sheet and event templates.

Yes. Paste a list of gifts straight from a spreadsheet or your donor database (donor, amount, date, method, fund), and the bulk generator creates a receipt for each one. Switch to annual-statement mode and it groups them by donor instead. Then print the whole batch or save it as a multi-page PDF in one click - a lot faster than filling in a Word template by hand for every donor.

Yes to both. The tool is free, with no sign-up and no per-receipt charge, and your receipts export as PDF, which is the format donors and auditors expect. Hit "Print or save as PDF", then choose your printer for a paper copy or "Save as PDF" as the destination for a digital file. Works in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.

You can, and this template makes manual and year-end receipting painless. But the faster path is automation: a modern donation platform issues a branded, IRS-compliant tax receipt the instant a donor gives, then generates year-end statements for you. That is exactly what Funraise does - so your team spends January thanking donors instead of formatting PDFs. Use this free generator today, and when you are ready to stop doing it by hand, we are right here.