If you volunteer services like this, I recommend that you charge normally, get paid, and then write your own check back as a contribution to cover the cost. Otherwise, when budgets are put together, the piano maintenance cost is dropped entirely, and if the situation changes, the organization is not prepared to deal with the unexpected expense. In addition, you can deduct cash contributions, but rarely contributions in kind (labor). But the biggest benefit is making piano maintenance a visible budget item for the group. I've worked for non-profits that had thousands of dollars of in-kind contributions of printing services by one member who had access to high-capacity color printers. When that member left, the group had to struggle to raise extra funds to cover the gap. --Cy-- Cy Shuster, RPT Albuquerque, NM www.shusterpiano.com On Oct 8, 2009, at 7:26 AM, Porritt, David wrote: > Jer: > > That's bad when that happens - especially if they really are > tooners. However, many tuners also attend church and if they are > committed to the church may volunteer to do work at a bargain or > even free just as some professional singers will sing in the choir. > The only way to tell the cheap tooners from the altruistic tuners is > to find out who they are. > > dp > > David M. Porritt, RPT > dporritt at smu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091008/5fe9c0b0/attachment.htm>
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