u/frailbabybird

I volunteer in development for an all-volunteer run rabbit rescue. Which is great because its giving me the chance to get experience in things my work wont give me opportunities for, but I also have very little guidance as Im the only one with any development knowledge in this group.

Im getting us started on little green light to process direct donations. The issue is we will still be using Square for some transactions, such as volunteer run rabbit grooming services, which requires a specific sign up form from Jotform (as we need people to upload vax records to get appointments). We allow for people to add on optional donations in this transaction.

For these transactions, should we only record the donation in little green light, or the whole transaction but list only the donation portion as tax deductible? If we do the latter method, should we also be recording all rabbit grooming services and just listing it as 0 tax deduction? That just feels like a lot of work for no benefit.

Any help is appreciated.

My spouse and I (both 30) both make around 60k, no personal debt except a mortgage with 314k remaining at 6.625%. Thanks to a city program, we're paying reduced taxes until around 2034 I believe (1.5k right now, might be about 5k when it ends).

Thanks to not having a car, our monthly household expenses are 3.3k and our take home pay is about 6.5k.

My mom passed a couple years ago, and my grandparents the year after. The estate is finally getting settled, and any remaining money was to be given to my grandparents kids, but my mom apparently had a talk with my aunt about having my mom's portion go to me and my siblings, so I was cut a check for 3k.

Im a little stumped with what to do with the money. We already max out our IRA, contribute to our 401ks (myself at 4% with 2% match, partner with 6% at 3% match - but I've had my 401k for longer), have 7 months of savings in our emergency fund + extra in sinking funds for bike maintenance, home maintenance/emergency, medical emergency, pet emergency, etc.

I dont just kinda want to randomly distribute the money around my favorite sinking funds or spend it randomly. My first thoughts were to just put it mostly down on our mortgage principal, and keep a little for improving our home, so it feels like my grandparents contributed a bit to the home we live in.

The other idea was to invest it in a brokerage account like VOO or VTI, but also the world has gone bonkers and while im not scared of my retirement funds that I ideally wont access for the next 30 years, I feel like a brokerage account is a bit riskier depending on how soon I'd want to pull from it.

Any thoughts or guidance?