Gifts Of Appreciated Stock: Say It, And Say It Again

Repeat, repeat, repeat. You may feel like you are constantly talking with your donors about the benefits of giving appreciated stock. Your talk track may go something like this:

• “Before you reach for your checkbook to make a gift to our endowment fund at the Community Foundation, consider giving highly-appreciated stock.”
• “Appreciated stock is frequently a far more advantageous gift to charity than giving cash.”
• “When you make a gift of shares held for more than one year, you’ll typically be eligible for a charitable deduction at the shares’ fair market value on the date of the gift.”
• “Plus, our endowment fund is a charity and therefore capital gains tax won’t be triggered on the sale of the shares, leaving the full fair market value available to grow our endowment and pave the way for the future success of our mission.”
• “By contrast, if you’d sold the shares yourself and given the proceeds to our endowment fund, you’d owe capital gains tax. This can be a big hit if you’ve held the shares for many years and they’ve got a low basis.”
• “It’s easy to transfer stock to our endowment fund because we work hand-in-hand with the Community Foundation team.”

You say all of this so much that you’re sick of it, so surely your donors are sick of hearing it too, right? Wrong. Your donors don’t live and breathe charitable giving like those of us who work in the nonprofit sector day in and day out. So, not only is the subject matter sometimes challenging, but it’s also likely that donors are not paying attention most of the time. Indeed, a lot of donors are missing out on the benefits of giving stock instead of cash.

Building your endowment fund, like any type of fundraising, is a long game. You have to keep repeating key messages so that the point finally gets across, often when the timing is just right and the topic of tax planning or charitable giving happens to be on a donor’s mind.

The team at the Community Foundation is always happy to serve as a sounding board for key messages and strategies to build your endowment, one person and one gift at a time, over and over–and over–again. We’re honored to work with you!

This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, accounting, or financial planning advice.