Selling Merchandise: eCommerce

Social Good Fund is not set up to account for commerce and eCommerce activities where projects sell goods or merchandise to raise money. In general, we encourage projects to offer goods, token items or merchandise as gifts in return for a donation—much like your local NPR affiliate offers gifts in return for your donation to incentivize you to donate.

For example, a donor giving a contribution of $50 might receive a T-shirt as a gift in exchange for the donation. The T-shirt has a Fair Market Value of (as an example) $10, so the tax-deductibility portion of the donation would then equal $40.

There are online services available that allow you to sell very limited types of merchandise, such as T-shirts, and will handle the sales tax on purchases and allow you to receive the proceeds. These include https://www.spreadshirt.com, https://www.teepublic.com/, and https://www.bonfire.com/; you may use one of these services. Please contact us to discuss if you would like to use another platform that handles sales tax for merchandise sales. Purchases made through these platforms are not tax-deductible. You may choose to utilize one of these services if providing the opportunity to purchase T-shirts is important to your community or supporters.

Some projects that are committed to eCommerce (beyond very limited merchandise sales through a full-service platform) will set up a separate LLC or sole proprietorship to undertake those activities and then donate the proceeds to their projects.

Please contact Social Good Fund if you decide to use an online service to provide material goods for sale.