Stock gifts: date of transfer

Yvette Yescas 2 · November 2016

I've read through many old threads about stock gifts and appreciate the insight. Right now, my organization is reviewing out policies for recording and acknowledging stock gifts.

Historically, it appears that gifts have been recorded in Raiser's Edge only after the stock transfer and sale has cleared and the money is in our bank account, and then the gift was recorded and acknowledged at that amount. From my research, I suspect this is not accurate. My understanding is that the value should not be stated in the letter, correct? Also, the "Date of Transfer" is the date that the stock leaves the donor's hands not the date that the sold stock appears in our account and is booked by accounting, correct?

Is anyone willing to share your written policies with me regarding the recording and acknowledging of stock gifts, please? Do you know of any other good resources for better understanding this and the best practices around stock gifts?

Thanks!

JoAnn Strommen · November 2016

Our org procedure is to immediately sell stock after it is given/transferred to our account. This is when $ hit our books and I as RE data entry person receive notice of it and enter it in RE.

I use gift date of the date they gave stock to us. After entering we then also 'sell' and I record the sold info: date we sold, stock amount, broker amount, issuer, shares, etc. I also copy/link into file the sale info from our broker.

I know from the forums that there are users who include sale price/dollar amounts in their letters, high/low stock price for the day, etc. We don't as you are not required to do so. The three gift acknowledgement/receipt requirements are date they gifted it to you, share issuer/type of stock and # of shares gifted. That's all we include. It's the donor's responsibility to determine value so we let them deal with that.

I glanced through my IRS folder and I don't see the documentation I'm looking for. Another source to for good info is fundsvcs.org. Click on the link on the left to search archives or follow their directions to search by term.

Hope that helps.

Deb Greenberg · November 2016

Yvette Yescas:

I've read through many old threads about stock gifts and appreciate the insight. Right now, my organization is reviewing out policies for recording and acknowledging stock gifts.

Historically, it appears that gifts have been recorded in Raiser's Edge only after the stock transfer and sale has cleared and the money is in our bank account, and then the gift was recorded and acknowledged at that amount. From my research, I suspect this is not accurate. My understanding is that the value should not be stated in the letter, correct? Also, the "Date of Transfer" is the date that the stock leaves the donor's hands not the date that the sold stock appears in our account and is booked by accounting, correct?

Is anyone willing to share your written policies with me regarding the recording and acknowledging of stock gifts, please? Do you know of any other good resources for better understanding this and the best practices around stock gifts?

Thanks!

Like JoAnn, we enter stock gifts in RE when we are notified of the transfer stocks to the organization, and use the transfer date as the gift date. I believe the rule is the gift date is the date the donor relinquishes control of the stock - that is, the day it is transferred to the organization or, I think, it's agent. So we also acknowledge the gift based on the high/low value of shares on the day stock was transfered to us. We try to sell the stock the day it's received and once the $ hits our account, we enter the sale value using Stock(sold).

Stock gifts: date of transfer

Comments

Categories