Gift Cards and Other Forms of Cash Remuneration
Gift cards are considered to be cash. Just as you cannot simply hand out cash to individuals, you also cannot just hand out gift cards. Unless the giving of gift cards is an essential and critical component to achieving your charitable mission that has been approved by SGF, you are not permitted to purchase and give away gift cards without prior approval. If gift cards, or other methods of receiving income, are a critical component of your project activities, please contact us at socialgood@socialgoodfund.org to discuss. Providing financial assistance can be an important part of your project, but it is taxable income, and we must be able to account for it correctly.
Please note that gift cards and gift certificates are not allowed in any instance as payment to employees. This includes as gifts to employees and in lieu of meals. In the case of wanting to provide meals to your employees, you may allow employees to submit meal expenses for reimbursement, purchase them with a SGF-issued credit or debit card (Brex/PEX), or set up business accounts with food ordering platforms such as Doordash or Grubhub to issue meal credits.
If your project has been approved to give gift cards, you must keep a detailed spreadsheet noting the following:
Amount of gift card
Vendor/Type of gift card (e.g. Walgreens gift card, RiteAid gift card, etc…)
Name of person receiving gift card
Date of receipt of gift card
Serial (or other unique identifier) # of gift card
Signature of person receiving gift card
Feel free to copy this template for collecting the information outlined above. Please submit the spreadsheet, along with a description of the purpose of the gift cards, and receipts, when requesting reimbursement or documenting the purchase.
In the unlikely instance where a person were to receive $2000 or more in gift cards, or gift cards in combination with other payments in a calendar year, that person must complete and submit a W-9 to Social Good Fund.
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