If I were to choose to contribute to a charity it would be the Humane Society.Nothing more rewarding in my opinion than assisting a helpless or abused animal.

(If not - then it's a major mess, best left for professionals to untangle.)Under this scenario, here is how you should have handled the sale:From the sale proceeds, reimburse each other for your respective contributions to the closing costs.Whatever is left - split 50/50.For taxes, each of you will report half of the sales proceeds, adjusted for the combined closing costs.If you can go back and do it this way - your economic parity will be intact, and so will be your tax reporting.

Depending on the context of the parties' financial situations and intentions, there may be implications for financing, ownership, accounting, and taxes depending on whether you are co-borrowers or one of you takes out a loan and the other provides down payment or some other financial contribution.

@Brian Garrett thank you for the contribution.

One thing, the experienced partner can not contribute any down payment funds to the partner who is getting the financing.

That doesn't change the fact that the vendor provided a valuable service... only who would pay (or contribute to) the bill.

It’d help if you could come up with a part time job, sidehistle or summer job that puts some cash in the bank so that you could contribute toward the down payment and perhaps have a month or two of mortgage saved.

Does anyone have any advise on the best way to do this or have other ways to have tenants contribute to shared utilities? 

I have a potential partner who could contribute maybe 5K a month bringing our monthly investment potential to 9K as a best case scenario.

The best (IMHO)you can do is seek out a tax and wealth advisor that you can work with so they can better understand your long term preferences as it relates to your estate and then give you advice on sustainable income into retirement (passive and/or retirement accounts), charitable preferences and heirs, if applicable.