Stock Gifts

Melissa Sheinman

Who is responsible for entering stock gifts into RE at your organization? And if it is someone other than a finance person does finance provide you with all the information you need or just the received/sold date, number of shares, and amounts and leave it to you to figure out the rest? Thanks in advance!

JoAnn Strommen

@Melissa Sheinman At current org, chief financial officer has entered stock gifts (may be coming to me as dba). Stock is not entered as ‘sold’ stock.

At prior org, as dba I entered the gifts where all we reported back to donor was gift date, shares of XXX and # of shares. We did no value in receipting. In RE, I entered $ and ‘sold’ the stock in RE with data from our investment company who sold stock for us.

Dana Burton

@Melissa Sheinman, finance does enter stocks at our org, but unfortunately it is not the person (me) who updates records and enters gifts. That being said, it is often incorrect and needs fixed…

Elizabeth Johnson

@Melissa Sheinman Our Development Associate enters the stock gifts along with all other gifts. We have several people in our department, the Head of School, and CFO all have board approval to work with our brokers. Our policy is to sell once we have confirmed the donor and the amount. My role is that of the database manager and I cover gift entry during extended absences of the gift entry personnel. Like JoAnn, we do not share the value in our letter but we do share the highs and the lows (we capture as gift attributes) the day the stock was transferred into our account. I built conditional Word Merges for acknowledgements years ago so the correct language for that donor populates if the issuer field is not blank. Hope that helps.

Daniel R. Snyder

@Melissa Sheinman We are basically the same as @Elizabeth Johnson, but we include a statement that says you will be credited with a gift of $x,xxx.xx as we often have donors who want to give a specific amount and will send a check for the remainder or have pledges and want to know how much is applied. We also include specific language about making sure to check with your tax advisor regarding any charitable deductions.

Dariel Dixon 2

@Melissa Sheinman It should not be a finance person, it should be a person in development. All the information should be emailed to someone in development when the transfer is made. I worked with the finance team and the brokerage house to try to get an email send to development once the gift arrived, and once it was liquidated.

Because of the nuance between the value the gift was sold at (this is usually all finance is worried about) and the value in the database (traditionally the average sale price of the stock that day), I think development should be working directly with the brokerage and entering the gifts correctly. Due to these differences, maybe the gifts should be set differently so they don't interfere with any GL posting.

TBH, stock gifts don't have to be hard, but they can be complicated. It will have to come from management that there is certain information that needs to be sent over for you to receive a stock gift. Some brokers are good with understanding that NPO's need a different level of donor data for proper stewardship and are good with this. It's so important, and it's really worth fighting for.

Melissa Sheinman

Thanks everyone for the helpful responses!

Ryan Bagley 3

@Dariel Dixon, curious to know if you store the High, Mid and Low values of the stock in RE? We provide this information in the Acknowledgement but have to enter it manually because we don't have a home for it in RE.