A donation receipt is the document that turns generosity into a deduction. Get the details wrong and the donor can lose the claim entirely, which is a poor reward for giving and an avoidable embarrassment for the organisation that issued it. The requirements are specific and largely unchanging.
Written September 2026. General information, not tax advice. Thresholds and wording differ by country; the specifics below reference US rules, which are the most commonly asked about.
The 6 details a donation receipt must carry
- The name of the organisation, exactly as registered, along with its charity or tax-exempt registration number.
- The donor name. A receipt made out to the wrong person, or to no one, is not usable by the donor.
- The date of the contribution, which decides the tax year it falls in and matters most for gifts made near year end.
- The amount, for cash gifts. For non-cash gifts, describe the property instead and do not state a value: valuing the item is the donor’s responsibility, not the charity’s.
- A statement about goods or services. Either confirm that none were provided in return, or describe them and give a good-faith estimate of their value. This is the field most often missed.
- The signature or a clear identification of the issuer, so the document is traceable to the organisation.
Our free receipt generator lays out these fields in the browser and produces a printable document, which is faster than editing a template and harder to leave a field blank in.
The goods or services line matters more than it looks
If a donor received anything in return, a dinner, a ticket, a tote bag, the deductible amount is the donation minus the value of what they received. A receipt that stays silent on this leaves the donor unable to calculate their claim correctly, and organisations have been penalised for omitting it.
The safe wording where nothing was given: a plain statement that no goods or services were provided in exchange for the contribution.
When a receipt is required
- Any single contribution of 250 dollars or more requires a contemporaneous written acknowledgment for the donor to claim it in the US.
- Quid pro quo contributions over 75 dollars, where the donor received something in return, require a written statement of the value.
- Smaller cash gifts still need some record, such as a bank record or a written receipt, for the donor to substantiate the claim.
- Non-cash gifts have their own escalating requirements, with appraisals needed above higher thresholds.
“Contemporaneous” has a precise meaning: the donor must have the acknowledgment by the time they file, or by the filing deadline including extensions, whichever is earlier. A receipt issued after that point does not rescue the deduction.
Practical advice for organisations
Issue receipts promptly rather than in an annual batch, because a donor who needs one in March will not wait until December. Keep your own copy of every receipt issued, numbered in sequence. And send an annual summary as well as individual receipts, which donors find genuinely useful and which costs almost nothing once the records are in order.
If your organisation also invoices for services or sponsorships, keep those sequences separate from donation receipts. The two are different transactions with different tax treatment, and our guide to invoice vs receipt covers why mixing them causes problems.
For donors
Check the receipt when you get it rather than at filing time. The three things that most often go wrong are the name, the date and the missing goods-or-services statement, and all three are trivial to correct in the week the gift is made and awkward to correct eleven months later.
Non-cash gifts need a different donation receipt
Property, goods and shares follow separate rules, and the single most common error is a charity helpfully stating a value.
- Describe, do not value. Record what was given in enough detail to identify it. The donor determines the value and carries the responsibility for it.
- Higher-value items may need an appraisal, and above certain thresholds the charity may be asked to sign the donor’s form acknowledging receipt, which is not the same as endorsing the value.
- Vehicles have their own regime, generally tied to what the charity actually sells the vehicle for rather than its book value.
- Services and time are not deductible, however valuable. Out of pocket expenses incurred while volunteering may be, which surprises people.
Year-end timing
The date on the donation receipt should be the date the gift was made, not the date you got round to issuing the document. A cheque posted on 31 December counts for that year even if it clears in January, and a card payment counts when it was charged. Getting this wrong on a December gift moves the donor’s deduction into the wrong tax year entirely.
Automating it without losing accuracy
Any organisation handling more than a handful of gifts will end up templating this, and two mistakes recur when they do. The first is a template with the goods or services statement hard-coded to say none were provided, which quietly becomes false the first time you hold a fundraising dinner. The second is auto-filling the date the document was generated rather than the date the gift was made, which misstates the tax year for anything issued in a January catch-up. Both are easy to avoid if you know to look for them, and expensive to discover from a donor.
Common questions
What must a donation receipt include? The organisation name and registration number, the donor name, the date, the amount or a description of non-cash property, a statement about any goods or services provided in return, and identification of the issuer.
When is a written donation receipt required? In the US, for any single contribution of 250 dollars or more, and for quid pro quo contributions over 75 dollars. Smaller gifts still need some record for the donor to substantiate a claim.
Should the charity state the value of a donated item? No. For non-cash gifts the charity describes the property; valuing it is the donor’s responsibility, and higher-value items may require a formal appraisal.
What does contemporaneous mean for receipts? The donor must hold the acknowledgment by the time they file their return, or by the filing deadline including extensions, whichever comes first. A later receipt does not restore the deduction.
Outside the United States
The principle is the same and the machinery differs. In the UK, Gift Aid lets a charity reclaim tax on donations from UK taxpayers, and it depends on a valid declaration from the donor rather than on the receipt alone, so the two documents do different jobs. Canada and Australia both operate registered-charity receipt regimes with prescribed wording. The constant everywhere is that the receipt must identify the charity, the donor, the date and the amount, and must be honest about anything given in return.
Sources and further reading
Where the figures and rules above come from, so you can check them:
Join the discussion