Official Rules

Information for Organizations and Donors

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General Information:

CoMoGives is a giving campaign benefitting area 501(c)(3) nonprofits who choose to participate. CoMoGives is powered by the Community Foundation of Central Missouri. We contract with Mightycause to provide the platform. The Foundation takes nothing from the donations to the organizations; donations are disbursed in full to the intended organizations, minus any fees that donors decline to cover.

CoMoGives was established as and remains an online-only campaign (with certain limited exceptions as described in this document) to facilitate the volume of donations with appropriate, automated record-keeping. The Foundation does not have the resources to manage and account for gifts by personal checks and cash nor with a large quantity of checks and must operate within its means in the management of CoMoGives.

Rules for Donations:

Only donations made online (credit/debit card, Venmo, PayPal, etc.) and checks processed through the Foundation as described below will be counted in CoMoGives. However, participation in CoMoGives does not stop an organization from fundraising or from accepting offline gifts, even during the campaign. Please do not advertise direct giving in a way that seeks to draw donors away from CoMoGives, as the intent is to encourage donors to give to multiple organizations in one transaction. You may put a note in your CoMoGives page to the effect that direct giving to your organization is available throughout the year.

We do not accept personal checks as general donations. We do not accept cash.

 Regarding Gifts from Funds:

We recognize that many people desire to give to CoMoGives participants from their IRAs or other funds but cannot do so via online means. CFCM will accept gifts from such funds, provided they follow the rules outlined in this section. CFCM will manually enter these gifts into CoMoGives so that they count toward leaderboard totals as well as challenge grants.

In the following three scenarios, please notify both esappington@cfcmfoundation.org and adminassist@cfcmfoundation.org via email of checks we should be expecting, with as much detail as you can give (amount, purpose, and especially your org name), as some checks show up with little to no clue what they are for. Especially, we will need to know if a check is intended as a matching grant.

  1. We accept checks from IRAs (for QCDs or RMDs). CFCM is not permitted by IRS code to split such gifts designated to multiple organizations; to give to multiple organizations the donor must send one check per recipient organization. Such checks must meet a minimum of $500 per recipient organization. CFCM does not have the staff and resources to deal with small checks.
  2. We accept donations from Donor Advised Funds if the fund is managed by the Community Foundation of Central Missouri. For these gifts, the donor may request one check to cover multiple donations and provide us with a list showing the recipient organizations and how much is to allocated for each. We will manage the request from their fund to CoMoGives, and no check is required. This is a convenience we provide for those who have a donor advised fund with us.
  3. We accept checks from Donor Advised Funds not managed by CFCM, provided each check is written for a minimum of $1,000. The checks must be accompanied by a list of recipients and the amount given to each. Despite donors' best efforts, checks often arrive without information indicating that it's for CoMoGives and/or for a specific organization; the list helps us determine the donors' intent.

Checks meeting one of the above qualifications must:

  • Be made payable to Community Foundation of Central Missouri.
  • Have written on the memo line "CoMoGives 2025 for (organization name)".
  • Be brought or sent to CFCM, 2635 S. Providence Road #104, Columbia, MO 65203
  • Be postmarked by Dec. 15 or brought to us by Dec. 18. Late arrivals will be accommodated if at all possible.

Finally, accepted check donations will be manually made to show on the recipient organization’s leaderboard within three working days of receipt of the check, and the full amount of the check(s) will be credit to the recipient org and shown on their leaderboard. We reserve the right to decline check gifts or other offline gifts that do not meet the guidelines.