This page describes how donations from members are handled.
Members (or even non-members) sometimes send unsolicited donations.
If they do it via our Donate webpage, then CiviCRM will set up a contribution record for the donation. If they are logged in to the website when they make the donation, it will be associated with their existing contact record- if not, another one might get created, especially if they use a different email address or something.
If they also pay by credit card, there's basically nothing to do, as CiviCRM will also handle receipting. If they pay by direct credit or cheque (the 'Pay Later' option), then there should be a contribution set up, but you will need to complete it when the payment arrives and send the receipt, in the same way as membership payments are handled.
If someone sends a donation without using our donation webpage, then you will need to create a contribution record for it. Check first to see if they already have a contact record in CiviCRM- if not, you will have to create one.
Members often include a bit extra as a donation when renewing their membership, or joining for the first time. By default, CiviCRM won't explicitly treat this extra bit as a donation as such- it will just take it to mean the member decided to pay more for their membership. The contribution record created will just be of type 'Member Dues'.
If they've paid via credit card, there's not much you can do about this- it's not possible to change the contribution type. If they pay via other means, you can change the contribution type to reflect the fact that it's a combination of membership and donation. There is a 'Member Dues + Donation' contribution type set up for this purpose.
Apart from that, the receipting for combined membership and donation payments is just the same as for a straight membership payment, and CiviCRM will handle it automatically. There should be a note on the receipt (from the receipt template) saying that any extra they've paid over and above the membership amount is treated as donation (they may want this for tax purposes).
From time to time we have done special fundraising appeals to members. There are some special tools in CiviCRM for doing appeals like this. You can set up special 'Contribution pages'- web pages with info about the appeal and payment tools- by choosing 'Manage Contribution Pages' from the CiviCRM 'Contributions' menu.
Some members (or even non-members) donate regularly to CAN by automatic payment. We don't generally use individual contributions in CiviCRM for each donation they make through the year. Instead, there is a 'Regular donation' contribution type which is used for the total of all their donations over the year. At the end of the tax year, set up one of these for each regular donor and use it to send them a receipt.
You'll need access to the CAN bank statement (or get the treasurer to do it) to find the payments from each member and add them up. You can look at regular donation contributions from previous years to see what the payment details are for each person- most of them start with 'AP', 'Automatic Payment', or 'Direct credit' or similar. You can then use a spreadsheet to find the totals.