acknowledging gifts of stock and gift amout

We record the High, Low, and Mean for the Transfer Date on Gift Attributes (with 3 decimal places).  Those 3 figures as well as the Total Value are included in the acknowledgement letter to the donor.  The High and Low are looked up on Google Finance.


I believe that the broker fees are a cost of doing business and shouldn't be reflected in the amount reported to the donor.  If your org, like mine, doesn't sell the stock immediately, you wouldn't know what those fees will be...


RE does have a Gift Type of "Stock/Property Sold" which does give you a place to record the broker's fees.  But none of the Stock Gift Types provide fields for High, Low, and Mean...only Number of Shares and Median.


Below is the documentation (last updated in Oct 2013) for Stock Gifts.  The Valuation Form just lists all of the information on one page as a cover sheet for the paperwork and has checkboxes for who needs to receive the paperwork (Finance, CEO, CDO, CFO).  It's a Word form and actually does the calculation for you (for Mean and for Value).


Hope this helps!  I'm sure there are several ways to do this.  My advise would be to work with your Finance Department and Auditors to be sure you are recording all of the data they might need and then document your process.

Stock Gift Entry

 
Fill out form StockGiftValuationForm.doc located at:
                                                                                                        G:\\DEV\\Information and Forms\\Forms

 
Go to Google Finance (www.google.com/finance) and enter the corporation name in the search box.

 
Click on “Historical prices” in the left-hand menu and be sure the date of the stock transfer is included in the list.  Print the page and use the data to complete the in-house form.

 
Calculate the mean by adding the high and low then dividing by two.  Calculate the total value by multiplying the mean by the number of shares gifted.

 
Create a pdf file of all associated paperwork (including the form and the Google Finance page).  File on the Media Tab and email it to those listed at the bottom of the form.

 
Enter a Gift with the Type of Stock/Property in RE.  Be sure to include the name of the corporation, and on the Details window, the number of shares and code for the corporation.  Enter Stock High, Stock Low, and Stock Mean data on the Attributes tab of the gift.

 
Generate the acknowledgement letter and be sure that all stock information is correct in the related paragraph (located in the receipt portion of the letter).

 

Can I give Josh's answer more than 1 good answer vote? 


Just got in and was reading thru email hoping someone put the answer he did. Ditto Josh's reply: receipt no values (their responsibility, why risk error), just date, description # and type, nothing with broker fees. 


If you want more substantiation of this go to fundsvcs.org and read their archive posts.

Our receipt is worded per Zane & Josh's posts...it lists the transfer date, number of shares, company, high value, low value, mean value, and calculated total value.  (Because that's how/where they'll be recognized in our donor lists.)  Followed by our standard, "No goods or services were provided in exchange for this gift. This gift is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Please consult your tax professional on the deductibility of your charitable gifts."  (Which is not exactly how I would prefer, but I was out-voted by our fundraisers and my boss.)  We also list the Donor Listing so they can see now how their name will appear in our next published annual report or other listing.

this is really helpful, thank you! i especially like what you have done there for donor recognition - as i prepare the annual report we are chasing down donor recognition for about 70 donors right now. we are careful about collecting it for high level membership society but not in other areas.