The following information explains cash and check donations to a ballot question committee.
Please note that donations are much easier for us to process online as we’re a small operation – presently we have not been in the news but if many donations start rolling in by check this would be hard for us to process and we would have to drop other tasks. Also, unless the donation is equal to or greater than $75, the fees, approximately 5% plus $0.30 per transaction, are often less than the cost of paying someone to input the donation as is required for state reporting.
REQUIRED INFORMATION FOR CHECKS AND CASH – State and federal law require certain information to be collected from donors. This is the required information:
- One of the following statements:
- I am the sole source of these funds.
- The source of these funds is ____ (name source of funds, such as follows:)
- union or association
- corporation (note that a corporation must also file a Form CPF 22 which is available online with the OCPF.us)
- name of partnership or unincorporated business
- Occupation and name of your employer (or that your are not employed), if an individual.
- Residential address or, if not an individual, the entity’s address as follows:
- union or association address
- corporate address
- address of the individual partner or owner D/B/A of a partnership or unincorporated business
For more information, please see OCPF.us online. To be absolutely correct, the address and occupation is not required for donations less than $50 in a single calendar year, which includes the value of in-kind donations such as rental space, software, etc.
CASH – First, cash cannot be accepted above $50 from any one person in a single calendar year. $50 and below can be collected in person. The required information above must be included.
CHECKS – If you would like to write a check instead of using the online program to support a ballot committee, then the following information is for you:
- Please send a larger donation, since it will be inputted by hand into the database – consider donating a larger amount to just one ballot question committee.
- Include all required information (listed above) so the donation can be used.
- Currently, for our work, the check may be written to ONE of the following ballot question committees:
- RadLimits at Last Tree Laws
- Privacy Rights at Last Tree Laws
- Address to Last Tree Laws, c/o K. Beatty, 149 Central Park Drive, Holyoke, MA 01040