Tools to Track In-Kind Donations for Nonprofits

Tracking an in-kind donation means recording 5 things for every gift: what the item was, who gave it, when it arrived, its estimated fair market value, and whether a thank-you went out. No single tool does all 5 automatically. A donor CRM handles the record and the acknowledgment. A spreadsheet or a donor-funded platform handles the arrival confirmation. Most nonprofits end up combining 2 tools, not relying on 1.

Here's what each piece actually looks like and which tool covers it.

What you actually need to record, and why it's different from a cash gift

A cash gift has 1 number: the amount. An in-kind gift has none, on purpose. Nonprofit accounting guidance is specific here: your organization isn't supposed to assign a dollar value to what a donor gave you. That's the donor's call for their own tax purposes. Your job is to record what the item was and let the donor determine its value.

That distinction changes how you track it. You're not logging a number, you're logging a description, a date, a donor name, and a status: requested, received, or acknowledged.

Donor CRMs: good for the record, not for confirming arrival

General donor management systems like Bloomerang, DonorPerfect and Little Green Light all support recording an in-kind gift as its own type, separate from a cash donation. Bloomerang's approach is to code the gift as "in-kind" in the Fund field with a $0 gift value, then flag it as a good or a service and log the estimated value in a separate fair-market-value field. Little Green Light does something similar: an "in kind" gift type with the tax-deductible amount set to $0 unless the donor has verified appraisal documentation backing a higher figure.

What none of these systems do on their own is confirm the item physically showed up. That step happens outside the CRM, usually by someone on staff manually checking it off once a box arrives.

Spreadsheets: still the most common tool, and the most manual

A shared spreadsheet with columns for item, donor, date requested, date received and acknowledgment status is what most small and mid-size nonprofits actually use day to day, whether or not they also have a CRM. It costs nothing and anyone on staff can update it. The tradeoff is that it only tracks what someone remembers to type in, and it produces no independent confirmation that an item arrived beyond a staff member's own note.

Donor-funded platforms: built-in arrival confirmation

This is the piece a spreadsheet and most CRMs can't provide on their own. Givelink ties each gift to the donor who funded it and confirms the item's arrival with a photo, so the "did it actually show up" question has an answer that doesn't depend on a staff member remembering to log it. It's free to nonprofits, no setup fee or subscription, and doesn't replace your CRM. It answers the arrival-confirmation question specifically, so you still log the gift in your CRM the same way you would any other in-kind donation. See how it works.

What to do when an item never shows up

Requested items don't always arrive, whether a donor changes their mind or a package gets lost in shipping. Whichever tracking method you use, mark the gift's status honestly rather than leaving it in limbo: requested, received, or not fulfilled. A donor-funded platform with photo confirmation makes this easier to catch quickly, since a gift that should have arrived by a certain date and hasn't stands out, rather than getting buried in a spreadsheet row nobody revisits.

How often to reconcile

A simple, workable rhythm for most organizations is a monthly check: compare what's marked "received" in your CRM or spreadsheet against what you can actually confirm arrived, and follow up on anything that's been sitting in "requested" for longer than expected. Waiting until year-end to reconcile in-kind gifts, which is common, makes it much harder to remember which items actually showed up versus which were only ever asked for.

Acknowledgment letters: what to include and what to leave out

Once a gift is logged, the thank-you letter follows the same rule as the recording itself: describe the item, don't assign it a value. A usable acknowledgment includes the donor's name, a description of what they gave ("a case of size 4 diapers," not "supplies"), the date received, and a line stating your organization is a registered 501(c)(3) if that's the case, since that's the language a donor's own accountant will look for when they claim the deduction. Leave the dollar figure out entirely. That's the donor's determination, not yours to state on their behalf.

Putting it together

A realistic setup for most nonprofits: a donor CRM (or a spreadsheet, if you don't have one yet) for the donor record and the fair-market-value field, and a platform that confirms arrival for anything you're actively soliciting online. The 2 pieces answer different questions, so combining them, rather than picking 1, is what actually closes the loop from "we asked for this" to "we can prove we got it."

FAQ

Do we need special software to track in-kind donations, or is a spreadsheet enough? A spreadsheet is enough to start, especially for a small organization. It becomes a liability once nobody can say for certain whether a specific requested item ever arrived, which is the gap a spreadsheet alone doesn't close.

Should we assign a dollar value to a donated item ourselves? No. Standard nonprofit accounting guidance is that the donor determines the fair market value for their own tax purposes, not your organization. Record the item's description and let the donor supply the value if they need it for a deduction.

Does Givelink replace our donor CRM? No. It confirms an item's arrival with a photo tied to the donor, which most CRMs don't do. You still log the gift itself in your CRM the way you'd log any in-kind donation.

What's the minimum we should be tracking for every in-kind gift? The item, the donor's name if you have it, the date received, and whether a thank-you went out. Fair market value is the donor's to determine, not a required field on your end.

If you're setting up in-kind tracking for the first time, browse live nonprofit profiles on Givelink to see what a photo-verified gift record looks like, or start a profile to add arrival confirmation to whatever you're already tracking.