How to Send Year-End Giving Statements to Donors

It's January 4th. A donor emails: "Can you send me something for my taxes?" Then another. Then a board member's spouse. By the end of the week you're building receipts one at a time from your payment platform, and you're not sure the ones you sent last year said everything they needed to.

A year-end giving statement solves this. It's a single document, sent in January, that lists every gift a donor made during the year, and for US donors it can serve as their written acknowledgment for each gift of $250 or more. Done well, it takes an afternoon to produce and does more than paperwork. This guide covers what to include, how to make them quickly, and the small addition that turns a year-end donation receipt into one of your best stewardship messages of the year.

This is general information, not tax or legal advice. If your situation is unusual, check with an accountant.

What is a year-end giving statement?

It's a summary of a donor's giving over the calendar year: each gift, its date, and its amount, plus the statements the IRS requires. Some organizations call it an annual receipt, a giving summary, or a tax statement. Same thing.

The reason it works legally is that, according to IRS Publication 1771, one annual summary can substantiate multiple contributions, as long as it includes the required information for each gift. So instead of chasing individual receipts, you send one clean document per donor.

If you want the basics of what any acknowledgment must say, we cover them in what a donation receipt must include. Here we'll focus on doing it once a year, for everyone, without losing a week to it.

Who needs a year-end giving statement?

Legally, a donor needs a written acknowledgment for any single gift of $250 or more to claim the deduction. Smaller gifts aren't added together, so a donor who gave $40 a month doesn't technically need one for tax purposes.

We'd send one to every donor anyway. Three reasons:

• Donors expect it. Many itemize, many have accountants who ask, and almost everyone files it somewhere.
• It's opened. A statement with "for your tax records" in the subject line gets read in a way an appeal does not.
• It's a natural moment to report progress. More on that below.

The legal penalty for not acknowledging a gift falls on the donor (they lose the deduction), not on you. That's not a reason to skip it. It's a reason to make it easy for them.

What should a year-end giving statement include?

For each donor:

1. Your organization's legal name (and it's helpful to include your EIN).
2. The donor's name and address as they'd want it on a tax document.
3. Each gift: date and amount for cash gifts; a description (not a value) for non-cash gifts.
4. The goods-or-services statement: that no goods or services were provided in exchange, or, if they were, a description and good-faith estimate of their value.
5. A total for the year.
6. A signature or name from someone at the organization.

What about event tickets and auction purchases?

If a donor paid more than $75 for something that was partly a gift and partly goods or services (a gala ticket, an auction item), the deductible amount is only the part above the value of what they received. List those payments separately with the good-faith estimate of the benefit. Ideally the donor already got a quid pro quo disclosure at the time; the statement should match it.

How do you make year-end statements from a spreadsheet?

You don't need special software. A spreadsheet and a mail merge will do it in an afternoon.

Step 1: Clean the list first

Merge duplicates before anything else. "Bob Smith" and "Robert Smith" at the same address are one donor who should get one statement, not two partial ones. Fix misspelled names too. A tax document with a donor's name spelled wrong is a small thing that feels like a big thing to them.

Step 2: Build one row per gift

Export every gift for the year with these columns: donor ID, donor name, address, email, gift date, amount, gift type, and a note for anything with goods or services attached.

Step 3: Summarize per donor

Use a pivot table or a second sheet to list each donor once with their total. Keep the gift-level rows; you'll pull them into each statement.

Step 4: Mail merge

Most word processors and email tools can merge a template with a spreadsheet. Your template has the fixed text (organization name, required statements, signature) and placeholders for the donor's name, gift list, and total. Run a test on three donors, check every number against your records, then run the rest.

Step 5: Send and log

Email is fine for an acknowledgment. Mail paper statements to donors who prefer it, and to older donors who you know keep paper files. Note in your records that each statement went out and when.

What should you add beyond the tax details?

This is where most statements stop, and where yours shouldn't.

A statement is one of the rare messages every donor opens and actually reads. If all it says is "here are your numbers," you've used that attention on paperwork. Add two or three sentences, above the gift table, about what their giving made happen this year. Not a newsletter. Just progress.

Here's a sample cover note:

Hi Elena,

Your giving statement for 2026 is below for your tax records.

Before the numbers, I wanted you to know what they added up to. This year our tutoring program worked with 64 students, up from 41 last year, and 52 of them moved up at least one reading level. Your gifts were part of every one of those hours.

Thank you for a remarkable year.

Jordan, Executive Director

Then the statement itself:

Date	Gift	Amount
March 12, 2026	Online gift	$100.00
June 30, 2026	Online gift	$100.00
December 3, 2026	Check #1184	$250.00
Total		$450.00

No goods or services were provided in exchange for these contributions.

That's it. The donor gets their tax document and a reason to feel good about the year. If you need help finding the progress to report, we wrote about showing donors their impact without a newsletter.

How should you handle QCDs and DAF grants?

Two kinds of gifts need different treatment.

IRA qualified charitable distributions (QCDs). Donors age 70½ or older can give directly from an IRA. These gifts aren't deducted the usual way, but the donor still needs a written acknowledgment with the date, the amount, and whether they received anything in return. Include QCDs on the statement, clearly labeled. More in how to thank a donor who gave from their IRA.

Donor-advised fund (DAF) grants. When a gift arrives from a DAF, the donor already got their tax acknowledgment from the fund's sponsoring organization when they put money into the fund. As practical guidance, don't list a DAF grant on the donor's statement as a deductible gift. You can still thank them for it, and you should. Here's how to thank a donor who gave through a DAF.

When should you send year-end statements?

In January. The IRS notes that charities typically send written acknowledgments no later than January 31, and donors start asking in the first week of the month. Aim for the second or third week, after the last December gifts (including the ones that arrive by mail on January 2) are recorded.

The statement is also a good opening for the next moment in a donor's year. If someone gave for the first time in December, the statement is their second message from you, and it should be warm. Here's what to send December donors in January beyond the statement.

Where Perennial fits

Perennial Giving imports your donor data from whatever you use now, merges duplicates, and keeps each donor's gift history in one place, which is most of the work behind a clean statement. It also keeps your impact library, the running list of progress updates you'd pull those two or three sentences from. Year-end tax summaries aren't something Perennial generates automatically yet, so for now the spreadsheet and mail merge above are the way to go.

Paperwork that does relationship work

A year-end giving statement is an obligation, but it doesn't have to read like one. Clean the list, merge the gifts, check the numbers, and send it in January. Then add the part nobody requires: a few honest sentences about what their giving made possible. Your donors will file the numbers. They'll remember the sentences.