Free tool
A church donation receipt names the church, the gift (an amount, or a description of property), the date, and what the donor got back. Most receipts say "nothing back," and that's right. The ones that go wrong are the dinner ticket and the donated piano. Answer two questions below and the template writes the right line and does the math.
This receipt still has example details in it, like Grace Community Church. Replace them with your own, or clear the example and start blank.
Grace Community Church
410 Oak Street, Springfield, IL 62701
EIN 12-3456789
Donation receipt
Thank you for your cash contribution of $500.00 to Grace Community Church for its Building Fund, received on October 4, 2026.
No goods or services were provided in exchange for your contribution.
Please keep this receipt for your tax records.
The wording follows IRS Publication 1771. The IRS calls any gift of money a "cash contribution," even a check or a card payment, so that's what the receipt says. This isn't tax or legal advice.
The IRS rule is about single gifts. A donor needs a written receipt from the church (the IRS calls it a written acknowledgment) to deduct any one gift of $250 or more, and separate gifts aren't added together. The IRS's own example is a member's weekly offerings: under $250 each, so no receipt is required for them, even when the year adds up to thousands. The church isn't fined for skipping one, but the donor loses the deduction without it.
Bills and coins are the exception to watch. A donor who puts cash in the plate has no bank record, so to deduct it at any amount they need a written record from the church with its name, the date and the amount. In anonymized Grain data for 2026 so far, 14% of giving dollars arrive that way. So when you count the plate, write down the name, date and amount on every envelope that has a name. That note is what puts those gifts on each donor's year-end statement, and the statement is the donor's record.
In the same data, a typical gift is about $100, well under the line, but the average gift at a typical church is $298. Each gift of $250 or more needs a receipt: its own, or its own line on a year-end statement.
Everything else on the receipt is a fact you already have. The sentence about what the donor got in exchange is where free templates slip: some print "No goods or services were provided" whatever happened, and others leave the line to you. The better ones handle a dinner ticket. This one asks, then writes the line, including the church-only answer for a religious ceremony.
An ordinary tithe, offering or gift, like a $1,000 check in the plate on Christmas Eve. The question is what the church gave in exchange for the gift, and a tithe doesn't buy anything. Choose "No, nothing" and the receipt says so.
A meal, a ticket, a book, an auction item. The receipt names it with your good-faith estimate of its fair market value (what a comparable ticket or meal would cost) and states the deductible amount: what they paid minus what they got. Say a donor pays $150 for a gala ticket and the dinner is worth $40. The receipt shows $110 deductible. Because the payment is over $75, the IRS requires that statement, placed where the donor will see it, not in small print. Missing it can cost the church $10 per contribution, up to $5,000 per event or mailing.
At $75 or less, the statement isn't required. The IRS's own church example is a $65 dinner-dance ticket worth $25, which leaves $40 deductible, and printing that costs you nothing. A VBS T-shirt or a book belongs here too: the IRS says consumer goods aren't religious benefits.
Every January someone writes: "Can I get a receipt for the piano? And can you put $4,000 on it?" Yes to the first, no to the second. The IRS asks the church to describe property, not value it, and valuing it is the donor's job. Choose "Property or goods," describe it ("a used upright piano"), and the receipt carries no dollar figure. A gift of stock is property too: describe the shares and leave off the value.
If the donor's non-cash gifts for the year total more than $500, they file Form 8283. Two forms can come back to the church. For an item worth over $5,000 (publicly traded stock aside), the donor will ask the church to sign Section B of their Form 8283. And if the church sells an item like that within three years, it may have to file Form 8282.
This is the rarer case. When admission to a religious ceremony is all a gift came with, the IRS lets a church say it provided only intangible religious benefits, without describing or valuing them. Pick it then, and only then. If your year-end statements already put both answers in one sentence ("no goods or services other than intangible religious benefits"), the template won't do that: it prints one answer or the other. Ask whoever advises the church before you change statements you already send.
The donor needs the receipt by the day they file their tax return or the return's due date (with extensions), whichever comes first. Charities usually send them by January 31. There's no IRS form: a printed letter or an email is fine. The gift date isn't on the IRS's list of required items, but without it the donor needs a bank record too, so the template includes it, along with the date you issue the receipt.
This tool makes one receipt for one gift: a large one-time gift, a donated item, an event ticket. For regular givers, one statement a year can cover every gift of $250 or more if it lists each one with its date and the total. Our guide to church giving statements covers what that needs. These donation thank-you letter samples help when you want a warmer note with the receipt. If the gift went to a restricted fund, the fund you name on the receipt should match the one you record it in, so read how restricted funds work first.
For the year-end statements, Grain does the work. Gifts from Planning Center, Pushpay and Subsplash sync into the same fund ledger as the rest of your books, and Grain produces annual giving statements from that ledger, so each statement matches the fund the gift was recorded in. Giving statements are part of the free Starter plan, for churches with up to $20,000 in monthly expenses.
The template won't tell you whether a gift is deductible, put a value on property, or apply the IRS exceptions for low-value token gifts, whose dollar limits change every year. Those are questions for your tax adviser.
Sources: IRS Publication 1771 and Publication 526.
Neither is required. The IRS says the donor's Social Security number or tax ID isn't needed on the receipt, and the church's EIN isn't on its list of required items either.
No. The value of time or services isn't deductible. Unreimbursed out-of-pocket costs, like supplies a volunteer buys for a ministry, can be. An expense of $250 or more needs a written receipt from the church that describes the volunteer's services.
Sharing this with another treasurer? The link is https://grainledger.com/tools/donation-receipt-template.