Donation Disbursement Timelines for U.S. Nonprofits

Content

• Donation Statuses
• Credit Card/PayPal Donation Timeline
• Matching Donation Timeline
• Donation Timeline Table
• Expediting Donations
• ACH/Wire

Donation Statuses

You can check the status of your donation under your My Donations page, and clicking into the donation. Once you find the donation you would like to check on, one of these statuses will be displayed:

Status	Meaning
Scheduled	Your donation has been received by Bright Funds, and is scheduled to be sent out in our next monthly disbursement cycle
Disbursed	Your donation was disbursed to the nonprofit
Held	There was a hitch with the disbursement of your donation, and our team is working on it. You can contact our team at [e-mail] for more information

Credit Card/PayPal Donation Timeline

Here is a quick look at the general process when it comes to disbursing donations to U.S. nonprofits.

1. Your donation made on Bright Funds will be queued for disbursement in the following month
2. Our team verifies donations and the nonprofit's recipient information
3. Your donation is sent to the nonprofit based on the mailing address they have registered with GuideStar/Candid (a database of confirmed nonprofits). Alternatively, we offer ACH/EFT should your nonprofit be interested in signing up (article here)

To summarize, if you made a donation via credit card/PayPal in January, then your donation will be queued to be sent in mid-February.

Nonprofits will also receive a donor report with donations through Bright Funds, sharing donor information (if the donor opted) and the donation details.

Matching Donation Timeline

If your company offers matching, your matching gift typically takes two months to be disbursed to the nonprofit. Here are the timeline details for a match:

• Your match was submitted January. It is approved by your company to be matched before the end of January.
• The status of your match will change from "Awaiting Approval" to "Awaiting Transfer from your company":

• One the 1st of the following month, in this case February 1st, Bright Funds invoices your company for the matching funds.
• When the invoice is paid by your company (typically before the end of the month the invoice was received), the status will update to "Received by Bright Funds".
• You will then see a "Scheduled" status appear, meaning the funds will be queued for disbursement in the middle of the next month - in this example, mid-March.
• Bright Funds sends the donation to your nonprofit via mailed check or wire. Mailed checks usually arrive within 5-10 business days. The status of the donation will then update to "Disbursed".

To summarize, a match requested in January would be expected to go out in mid-March.

Donation Timeline Table

Here is a helpful table to determine your credit card/PayPal donation as well as your matching associated:

Month credit card/PayPal donation was made	Month credit card/PayPal donation will be sent	Month matching donation is expected to be sent*
January	February	March
February	March	April
March	April	May
April	May	June
May	June	July
June	July	August
July	August	September
August	September	October
September	October	November
October	November	December
November	December	January
December	January	February

*Note: While the two month timeline for matching is typical, this is contingent on when your match is approved, and when the matching funds are sent to Bright Funds by your company.

Expediting Donations

At this time, Bright Funds is not able to expedite individual donations to nonprofits.

The Bright Funds team completes a multi-level reconciliation process at the start of each month. This accounts for all donations, to all nonprofits, worldwide. Given the extensive process, our team is not able to pull an individual donation to go through the entire reconciliation.

ACH/Wire

We strongly encourage nonprofits to sign up for ACH/wire. If you are in touch with your nonprofit, please feel free to share this article on ACH payments with them, and they can contact Bright Funds at [e-mail] for assistance.