I have another policy-writing-related question for the cognoscenti. Please reply off-list. We are grappling with the problem of non-cash non-capitalized donations: specifically, how these are documented, tracked, and acknowledged. To date we do not have, and never have had, a museum-wide system for this, with the inevitable result that much falls through the cracks. I am looking for good policy statements, procedures, and tracking forms. Right now we have several major problems to be resolved: 1. There are approximately 7 different and mutually exclusive forms for roughly this purpose that are used by different departments, each of which has its own procedure, and most of which do not report such donations any higher up the administrative food chain. Many donors go unthanked (at a formal level) and unacknowledged. 2. Our membership director does not now have Razor's Edge set up to accept a donation without an appraised value or estimate, yet a great many natural history materials aren't and can't be routinely appraised. The practice of assigning a token value to such materials is, as I heard at the value and valuation of natural history collections conference in Manchester, a *bad* and potentially disastrous one. We need to set up a category for non-cash non-capitalized donations that still recognizes the importance of the donated materials, and no one is sure how to do this. 3. Other than the boilerplate language in the ethics and collections policies re not doing or verifying appraisals, we don't have much policy language in place to govern how we accept and deal with such donations. Right now, equipment and in-kind services accompanied by an invoice are tracked through both membership and accounting, but donations of specimens without an invoice value are not. I am looking for samples of such policy language from other museums so that the task force I set up can make recommendations re policy and procedures for the executive director to take to the Board. Our goal is to create a single form with good ease of use that will be used by all departments to document donations as they are accepted and to get that information into the development/finance tracking system. By doing this, we hope to ensure that all donations are acknowledged at the proper time and level even when they do not have a financial value. The problem of valuation of natural history collections is a tough one, and I don't want to open that particular can of worms here. All I'm trying to do is to figure out a good way to recognize the value of these donations and to encourage donors of non-cash non-capitalized materials in the same way that we encourage and recognize our financial and in-kind services donors. Thanks in advance for your help. Cheers, Sally Shelton Director, Collections Care and Conservation ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | San Diego Natural History Museum | | P. O. Box 1390 | | San Diego, California 92112 USA | | phone (619) 232-3821; FAX (619) 232-0248 | | email [log in to unmask] | | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------