Miami Beach Health Foundation Donation Policy

The MBHF Foundation solicits donations of funds, services, and other items from the public in order to pursue its goals relating to the development and operations of the foundation. This document outlines the policy of the Foundation regarding such donations. Note that a separate policy covers contributions of code.

Anyone authorized to act on behalf of the MBHF Foundation shall abide by this policy, and other members of the Foundation (who generally do not have authority to act on its behalf) should be guided by it.

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Solicitation of Donations

The Foundation shall at all times maintain materials and a web page soliciting donations of funds, services, and/or other items. Such solicitations should describe the purposes for which the donations are to be The Foundation will actively solicit donations of funds, services and/or other items from the public at large and from specific individuals and organizations. In no event shall the Foundation send solicitations via bulk e-mail to individuals without prior explicit consent of those individuals. (The Foundation may send solicitations to public mailing lists with approval of the Board.)

Any Foundation solicitation shall indicate that the Foundation wishes to acknowledge donations, and shall either delineate the Foundation's acknowledgment policy or mention the policy and include a contact for more detailed information.

The Foundation shall not solicit donations on behalf of other Organizations, other than Miami Beach Community Health Center, without approval by the Board. Third parties that wish to use the name or any other trademarks of the Foundation in order to solicit donations, or in order to make representations with respect to donations to the Foundation, including those wishing to claim that some proceeds from sales will be directed to the Foundation, must obtain prior approval from the Board. In order to prevent misunderstanding, any companies who are known to donate portions of proceeds from sales to the Foundation should be identified
in Foundation materials and on the Foundation's web site.

Acceptance and Rejection of Donations

The Foundation should accept all offers of donations that it can reasonably use, subject to the following guidelines:

Monetary donations shall be considered accepted when deposited into a MBHF Foundation bank account. The Foundation shall mail and email a receipt for a donation. For donations of US$500 or more, the Foundation shall provide a letter of receipt to the donor if one is requested. (Due to the inherent difficulty of tracking them, the Foundation discourages cash donations.)
Offers for donations of services should be clear and specific, and must be explicitly accepted or declined by the Foundation.
Offers for donations of goods/products should be accepted provided that they have no cost to the Foundation and that members of the MBHF can be found who are willing to take possession of the Item(s) being donated.
Upon receipt of items donated of any value, the member of the Foundation doing so shall record the name of the party from whom the donation was received.
Goods/Services donated with a value over US$1000 or for which the donor requires a receipt should include an inventory (preferably including model and serial numbers). Upon taking possession of these donations, the member of the Foundation doing so should verify the inventory (or create an inventory if one was not provided) and forward it to the Foundation's Executive Committee.
The Foundation cannot accept offers of loans of goods/products. Persons wishing to lend good/products to further MBHF’s development may wish to lend it to MBHF, but should be aware that those will not be considered loans or donations to the Foundation, and that the Foundation cannot be held responsible in any way for the actions of its members with respect to such loans.
The Foundation shall not accept conditional donations, unless approved by the Executive Committee.
The Board reserves the right to refuse or return any donation it deems unsuitable. If such a donation cannot be returned, it shall be forwarded to another suitable 501(c)3 or other legally recognized charitable organization.

Acknowledgment of Donations

It is the policy of the Foundation to acknowledge donations publicly. The Foundation also accepts anonymous donations, but donors should be aware that such donations may be tracked internally in a way that may expose them to members of the Foundation.

If complete anonymity is desired, donors should contact the Foundation's Executive Committee before making the donation. Acknowledgment of donations should be categorized based on amount and type of donation, and organized by the calendar year in which the donation was made, with categories for monetary, service, and goods/products donations, and further categorization as is found suitable.

The Foundation shall allow HTML links on donation acknowledgment web pages from the name of each donor to a URL of their choice.

Actions to be Taken to Implement the Donation Policy

The following actions shall be taken immediately to implement this policy:

The materials, including the pages on the Foundation web site that solicit and/or acknowledge donations, and any web pages under Foundation control pertinent to the donation process (e.g. the MBHF PayPal page) shall be updated to reflect this policy.
A notice shall be put on the Foundation web site to indicate contributors' potential choices about donation acknowledgment and solicitation, with instructions for indicating how they wish their donation to be treated.
The MBHF web site shall provide information about what procedures donors of products/hardware should follow in order for the Foundation to be able to issue a receipt.
Known donors who have not been acknowledged for their donations shall be contacted and asked if they wish public acknowledgment.

The following actions shall be taken on an ongoing basis, beginning in calendar year 2007, to implement this policy:

Web pages documenting historical donations shall be re-linked and/or rearranged to indicate that they indicate that they are historical in nature.
A web page shall be maintained for each calendar year to acknowledge donations.