Collecting Read-a-Thon Donations and Sending Receipts

Most of the work in a read-a-thon happens after the reading stops. Money has to come in, be counted and deposited, be matched against what was pledged, and be acknowledged in writing when the rules require it. This page gives you a collection plan, a counting routine, the receipt rules from the IRS, and wording for chasing unpaid pledges without souring anyone. For planning the event itself, see our read-a-thon planning guide.

Method note: This page summarizes IRS guidance for organizers; it is not tax or legal advice, so confirm your group's situation with your treasurer, your parent organization or a tax professional.

Choosing how to collect: online, check or cash

We recommend accepting all three methods, because each one reaches supporters the others miss. The trade-offs:

One rule applies to all three: money goes to the organization, never to an individual. Checks are made payable to the organization's exact legal name. Online gifts land in the organization's account. No volunteer should ever use a personal account to "hold" read-a-thon money, even briefly.

Questions to ask a payment provider

Online payment fees are usually a percentage plus a fixed amount per gift. Ask any provider two questions and get the answers in writing: what is the all-in percentage, including card processing, and is there a per-gift fee? A fixed per-gift fee costs small gifts proportionally more. Some providers let donors add the fee to their gift. If you offer that, keep it optional and say plainly what it covers. Also ask when funds are released to your account and whether any amount is held back for refunds or chargebacks, because that decides when the money is actually yours to spend.

For the fee arithmetic on gifts of different sizes, see the fees section of our read-a-thon economics page. To see how your provider's real rate changes your net, enter it in the read-a-thon fundraising calculator.

Setting collection deadlines

Plan on two dates and announce both before reading starts.

1. Logs due: two school days after reading ends. Per-minute pledges can't be totaled until the minutes are in, so this date has to come first.
2. Money due: one week after logs are due. That is about nine days after the last reading day, and it gives families time to tell per-minute supporters their final amount and receive payment. A longer window mainly delays the celebration; plan on one week.

Put both dates in the parent letter, on the pledge sheet's cover note and in every reminder. Logs go back through the class; money goes in a separate sealed envelope marked with the reader's first name and class, to the office or a locked box the treasurer empties, never through teachers. Hold the celebration after the money deadline so you can announce a real total. Flat gifts can be collected any time, so encourage supporters to pay when they pledge. Our page on pledge structures and caps explains why flat and prepaid pledges reduce what you have to chase.

Counting and depositing: the two-person rule

Every money envelope is opened and counted by two people together, and the money is deposited the same day. The rule protects the volunteers who handle it: if a count is ever questioned, two signatures settle it.

1. Open each envelope with both counters present. Never open envelopes alone, even "just to sort them."
2. Record each check separately: check number, the name printed on the check, the amount, and the reader or class it belongs to.
3. Count cash twice, once by each person, and record the total.
4. Mark any line where a receipt is needed, for example a gift of $250 or more, or a donor who asked for one.
5. Both counters sign the count sheet.
6. Deposit the same day. If that's impossible, lock the money up overnight with a second person present, and deposit first thing the next business day.
7. Staple the deposit slip to the count sheet and file both.

A counting schedule a volunteer team can keep

Flat gifts arrive for weeks, and volunteers can't meet daily. This schedule keeps the two-person rule:

• A locked drop box. Sealed envelopes go into a locked box at the office. Office staff log each envelope unopened and never count it; the front office guide (PDF) covers their part.
• Two scheduled counts a week during the pledge window. Pick two fixed times, count with two people, and deposit right after each count.
• An overnight rule. Between counts, envelopes stay sealed in the locked box or the school safe, following the school's own safe policy. Ask the office what that policy is. Nothing goes home with a volunteer, and two people recount anything that comes out of a lockbox.
• Daily counts in money-due week. Expect most per-minute money then, so count and deposit every school day until the deadline.

• Donation Count SheetTwo-person count sheet: check number or cash, payer as written, amount, reader or class, receipt needed. Signature lines for both counters and the deposit.Download PDF

Apply your board's standing controls here too; our guide for PTA and PTO read-a-thons lists them.

Reconciling pledges and payments

Reconciling means checking three numbers against each other: what was pledged, what was collected, and what was deposited. Collected and deposited should match to the cent. Pledged and collected won't, and the gap is your follow-up list.

Use our free read-a-thon tracking sheet (Excel). It has one row per reader, identified by initials or an ID, with flat gifts pledged, per-minute owed after caps, collected and a calculated outstanding column, plus a class tab for minutes. Per-minute amounts come from each pledge sheet and the reader's total minutes.

Crediting online gifts. Ask supporters to type the reader's first name and class in the gift's note or comment field, and say so in the donor email and on the giving page. When you download online records, match each gift to a reader by that note. Gifts with no note count toward the school total.

Example At the end of a school's read-a-thon, sheets and online records show $9,400 pledged. The deposits show $4,850 in checks, $1,120 in cash and $2,930 online.

Arithmetic $4,850 + $1,120 + $2,930 = $8,900 collected. $9,400 − $8,900 = $500 outstanding. $8,900 ÷ $9,400 ≈ 94.7% collected.

Commit spending, such as a book order, only against money that has been deposited, not against online gifts still waiting to be released. Report the total collected, not the total pledged, when you announce results. Keep a short list of open pledges by reader, not by supporter name, and hand it to families for follow-up.

Following up on unpaid pledges politely

The family should follow up with its own supporters; the organizer should follow up with families. Keep each message short, warm and specific about the amount and how to pay. Send one reminder from the organizer to families before the money deadline, then one note from the family to any supporter still unpaid. After that, thank the supporter for their encouragement and let it go.

A note from the organizer to a family:

A note from a family to a supporter:

More follow-up wording, including the per-minute "final amount" message, is in our read-a-thon letter templates.

Receipts and the IRS rules

Three IRS rules matter for a read-a-thon. The record rule for gifts of any size and the $250 acknowledgment rule apply often. The quid pro quo rule rarely applies. This is general information, not tax advice.

Gifts of any size: the donor needs a record

Fact A donor can't deduct a monetary gift of any amount without either a bank record, such as a canceled check or card statement, or a written communication from the charity showing its name, the date and the amount (IRS Publication 1771). This matters more than it used to. Fact Beginning with tax year 2026, donors who don't itemize may deduct up to $1,000 ($2,000 for married couples filing jointly) of cash contributions to eligible organizations (IRS Publication 6196). The IRS lists it as a permanent deduction, not a one-year rule, so a gift made in 2027 counts on the donor's 2027 return (IRS list of new tax law provisions). Gifts to donor-advised funds don't qualify. Small read-a-thon gifts can now be deductible for supporters who don't itemize.

Fact "Cash" in IRS terms means money, not only bills. The IRS record rule covers "cash, check, or other monetary gift" (IRS Topic 506), and the new non-itemizer deduction excludes only noncash gifts such as clothing, stock or property. Envelope cash, checks and card gifts are all money gifts.

Check and card gifts already leave a bank record. A supporter who puts $20 in cash into a sealed envelope has none, so your written receipt is the only record they can get. In practice: offer a simple written receipt to every cash donor, use the count sheet's "receipt needed" column to track who wants one, and send the thank-you letter below, with its required wording, to every donor you can reach. Receipts go out through the treasurer, so the pledge sheet still needs no contact fields.

How the treasurer gets an address. A cash or check donor who wants a written receipt writes their name and a mailing or email address on the outside of the sealed envelope, or asks the treasurer for one directly. Say this in the parent letter and the donor email. For online gifts, use the contact details the donor entered when giving. Never ask families to collect supporters' addresses.

Gifts of $250 or more: written acknowledgment

Fact For any single contribution of $250 or more, the donor needs a contemporaneous written acknowledgment from the charity to claim a deduction, according to the IRS's guidance on written acknowledgments. The acknowledgment must state:

• the amount of the contribution;
• whether the organization provided any goods or services in return; and
• if it did, a good-faith estimate of their value.

Plan on sending acknowledgments within a few weeks of the event, and before the calendar year ends. Read-a-thon supporters normally receive nothing in return, so the acknowledgment can say "No goods or services were provided in exchange for this contribution." The threshold is per single contribution, so a $300 gift clearly needs one. When the same donor gives several smaller gifts, the simplest practice is to acknowledge every donor anyway. We suggest sending a thank-you letter with the required wording to every donor, which handles the rule automatically.

Payments over $75 that buy something: quid pro quo disclosure

Fact When a donor makes a payment of more than $75 that is partly a gift and partly in exchange for goods or services (a "quid pro quo" contribution), the charity must give the donor a written disclosure. Under IRS Pub 1771, the penalty for not providing it is $10 per contribution, up to $5,000 per fundraising event.

In most read-a-thons this rule doesn't come up, because the prizes go to students, not to donors. It does apply if a donor receives something of more than token value in return for a gift over $75, such as a dinner or an event ticket. Low-cost items bearing your group's name or logo may fall under the IRS's token exception (see Publication 1771), so check the current limits before offering any donor perk. If you plan perks, decide before launch whether to drop them or to include the disclosure. Keep raffles separate from read-a-thon gifts; states regulate raffles under their own rules, so check yours before running one.

Checking your tax-exempt status

Whether a gift is deductible depends on the organization that receives it, not on the event. A PTA or PTO with its own 501(c)(3) status can generally receive deductible gifts. A group without its own exemption may not be able to, even if it supports a public school. Before you print the "tax-deductible" line anywhere, check.

1. Look up the organization. Search its legal name or EIN in the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search. The listing shows whether it is eligible to receive deductible contributions and whether its exemption has been revoked.
2. If you can't find it, ask about a group exemption. Some parent-group units are covered under a parent organization's group exemption and won't appear under their own name. Ask your state or national parent organization whether your unit is covered.
3. Check that annual filings are current. Fact Small exempt organizations whose gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less can file the short electronic Form 990-N (e-Postcard). An organization that fails to file for three consecutive years automatically loses its tax-exempt status.
4. If your group isn't exempt, ask who can receive the gifts. Ask your district business office or your school's education foundation whether it can accept read-a-thon gifts for your stated purpose and acknowledge them, and follow its rules on who holds the money. If your unit is covered by a group exemption, donors can confirm deductibility with the central or state organization.
5. Check whether your state requires registration. Some states require charities to register before asking the public for donations, with exemptions that vary. Ask your state or national parent organization, or your state attorney general's charity office, whether your group needs to register or file for an exemption.
6. Write down what you found. Put the status, the EIN and the date you checked in the handoff folder, so next year's organizer doesn't have to repeat the search.

The same receipt and status rules apply to any pledge event. Our companion receipts guide for walk-a-thons covers them for groups that also run a walking event. When the money is counted and acknowledged, return to the full read-a-thon guide for the celebration and the handoff.

Sources

1. Internal Revenue Service, Publication 1771: Charitable Contributions, Substantiation and Disclosure Requirements (rev. 11-2023). irs.gov (accessed October 19, 2026)
2. Internal Revenue Service, Charitable contributions: written acknowledgments. irs.gov (accessed October 19, 2026)
3. Internal Revenue Service, Tax Exempt Organization Search. apps.irs.gov (accessed October 19, 2026)
4. Internal Revenue Service, Annual electronic filing requirement for small exempt organizations: Form 990-N (e-Postcard). irs.gov (accessed October 19, 2026)
5. Internal Revenue Service, Publication 6196, Charitable Contribution Deduction Tips for Non-Itemizers (10-2026). irs.gov (accessed October 19, 2026)
6. Internal Revenue Service, One, Big, Beautiful Bill provisions. irs.gov (accessed October 19, 2026)
7. Internal Revenue Service, Topic no. 506, Charitable contributions. irs.gov (accessed October 19, 2026)