Short answer: Send year end giving statements by 31 January. A statement should list the donations the donor made during the year, your organization name and EIN, and a line stating whether anything of value was given in return. The IRS does not require an annual summary, but if you send one it has to follow the same rules as a written acknowledgment.

Every January a finance volunteer somewhere opens a spreadsheet, a word processor and a mail merge they half remember from last year, and spends two evenings producing letters that all say the same thing. It does not have to work like that, and getting it wrong has consequences for your donors rather than for you.

When statements have to go out

Send them by 31 January. That is the practical deadline, because donors start preparing returns in February and a statement that arrives in March is a statement that generates phone calls.

There is a subtlety worth knowing. The IRS does not actually require you to send an annual summary at all. What it requires is a written acknowledgment for any single gift of $250 or more, and the donor needs that in hand before they file. Most organizations send an annual statement anyway, because it covers all of those acknowledgments in one document and because it is a reason to thank somebody.

What a statement has to contain

If you choose to send an annual statement, it has to meet the same standard as a written acknowledgment. In practice that means five things.

Your organization name and EIN

The legal name, not the trading name you use on social media, and your Employer Identification Number. A donor whose return is questioned needs to be able to show who received the money.

The donor name

As it appears on their giving record. If a couple gives jointly, match how the gift was made rather than how you file it internally.

The period and the gifts in it

State the period plainly, for example 1 January to 31 December. List the donations that fall inside it. A single statement can cover many gifts as long as it lists them clearly.

The tax deductible amount

This is where organizations slip. The total a donor gave and the total they can deduct are not always the same number. A gala ticket that included dinner is not fully deductible, and the statement has to reflect that.

A goods and services line

Every statement needs a sentence saying whether the donor received anything of value in return. If they received nothing, say so explicitly. If they did, describe it and give a good faith estimate of its value, because that amount comes off what they can deduct.

Statements that write themselves.

Set the wording once and CoreCause fills in the period, the totals and your EIN for every donor. Book a short demo and we will set yours up.

Book a Demo → See receipts and statements in CoreCause

Three mistakes that cause January phone calls

Asking for another gift

A year end statement is a record, not an appeal. Putting a donate button in it muddies a document somebody may need to show to an accountant, and it reads as though the thank you was conditional. Send the appeal separately.

Treating pledges as gifts

A pledge is a promise. It becomes deductible when it is paid, not when it is made. A statement that counts an unpaid pledge overstates what the donor can claim.

Counting a gift in the wrong year

A gift posted on 31 December belongs to that year even if it settles in January. Date the gift by when the donor gave it, not by when it reached your bank.

Producing them without the two evenings

The work in a statement is not the writing, it is the merging. The wording is identical for every donor and only the name, the period and the figures change, which is exactly the kind of job that should not be done by hand.

In CoreCause the statement is a template. You set the email subject and the body once, drop in merge fields for the donor name, the statement period, the total contributions, the tax deductible total, your EIN and your address, and the platform fills them in per donor. There is a preview so you can see exactly what lands in an inbox, and a restore default if an edit goes wrong.

Statements are configured separately from donation receipts, because the two documents do different jobs. A receipt acknowledges one gift at the moment it happens. A statement summarises a year.

A short January checklist

Reconcile your giving records before you generate anything, because a statement is only as good as the data behind it. Check that gifts are dated by when the donor gave. Separate what was given from what is deductible. Confirm your EIN and legal name are current. Then send, and keep a copy of what went out.