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Gifts of things like real estate, stock, and life insurance may seem very different from one another, but the gift acceptance process for all non-cash gifts is the same. These same five steps apply to all non-cash gifts, but one of them stands out as by far the most important – Evaluate for Opportunity and…

Gifts of private stock can be incredibly valuable, but they come with some additional complexity you don’t find with public stock. I’ve seen a number of charities get themselves into sticky situations with gifts of private stock, because they didn’t understand some important, but basic details. For example, they get stuck owning it long-term because…

For many years, the rules on what constituted a pre-arranged sale have been confusing. Various sources of law offered conflicting advice, so how were we to know what to do? Fortunately, we have some new advice that gives us more solid guidance about how to avoid this situation. Before we get to that new guidance,…

There is one topic that charities continue to ask me about – Donor Advised Funds. They ask questions about DAFs when I’m on stage speaking to an audience. They ask questions about DAFs when I’m helping them with their non-cash gifts. The questions just keep on coming, SO, I thought I would share some DO’s…

In the spirit of tax season, I thought I’d clear up confusion you may have about all the tax forms related to charitable giving. I get a LOT of questions about these tax forms, so I think it’s time to explain them in terms that everyone will understand. Taxes are confusing enough, so we’re going…

Many charities avoid asking donors to give non-cash assets like stock or real estate because they don’t have the infrastructure to handle those gifts. They also shy away from talking about more sophisticated giving techniques, like charitable gift annuities, because they don’t have their own program. If this describes your organization, you’re in luck –…

True to form, Congress passed another comprehensive year-end piece of legislation in late 2022 that made significant changes to rules for retirement assets, including some new provisions for Qualified Charitable Distributions. The legislation has been dubbed “SECURE Act 2.0”, because it addresses some of the same areas of law that the SECURE Act of 2020…

Charitable gift planning has historically been reserved for older people, but it shouldn’t be. People of all ages create charitable gift plans every day. You can talk to literally anyone about a gift plan at any time. In my experience, gift plans are created during significant “life events”. These events happen at virtually any time…

If you live or work in an agricultural area, it may come as no surprise that farmers donate things like harvested crops, livestock, and farm machinery to charity. It makes sense if you think about it. It’s what farmers have and they’re valuable assets that charities can sell. Each of these three asset types requires…

Over the past 20 years, I’ve worked on hundreds of non-cash gifts and the successful ones all had something in common. They all followed the same 5-step blueprint. Every single one of them. No matter the asset type or value, they all proceeded the same way. I didn’t see it at the time, but recently…