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The Weirdest Gift You've Ever Received

Vered Siegel

Hello everyone! I'm presenting next month on unusual gifts - and I'd love to use your real-life examples if you're willing to share. What's the weirdest gift you've ever put in your database? ?

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Comments

Aaron Charpia

A racehorse embryo!

Faith Murray

Wow, @Aaron Charpia! That about tops anything we've ever gotten.

We get a truckload of soybeans every year. Thankfully, our donor has it shipped to the grainery on our behalf so the grainery can cut us a check.

We've gotten some other weird items gifted in the mail before – probably the oddest item being a communion wafer, and we didn't know if it was consecrated or not, so that was a dilemma! – but those never got put into our database.

Chris Nungesser

We were gifted an island. I'm not sure if that's weird, but it felt kind of cool.

Follow-up:
I was reminded today that we also will sometimes receive bras for sea turtles.

I feel like this is better without explanation. My suggestion is to stop reading here and just have that image in your mind. However, for those that need the context: we have a sea turtle hospital at our aquarium where we treat sick and injured sea turtles and then release them back into the wild. The clasps on the bra straps can be useful when our team is treating a smaller turtle with a fracture in its shell. It helps them in the process of fusing the shell back together.

Kylea Johnson

An ambulance. We are a community college with a diesel program and they receive the strangest things from the community. From what I understand they completely disassembled it and then reassembled it.

We also got a small wrecking ball (we don't have a wrecking machine…) I am not totally sure what they did with that! = P

Barbara Kunkel

All of these examples have me in AWE because the only example I have is cemetery plots.

Vered Siegel

Barbara - Actually, that's really interesting because it begs the question: Can you actually accept a “gift” of a cemetery plot? Is it a charitable gift, since you don't transfer ownership of the land, just the use of the land? I realize it's meant to be eternal rental terms…

Vered Siegel

Chris -
If you send me a picture of a turtle in a donated brassiere, I will absolutely put it in my presentation. Just saying.

EDIT: Chris sent me the picture, so… look out for this in the webinar.

Amy Dana

It's always fun to have beauty items donated to a silent auction in a lovely gift basket and then realize they are slightly used. (yes, we pulled them before the bidding was finished)

Christine Cooke

Well the embryo beats out the full-grown racehorse someone tried to gift us at an org I worked at 20 years ago. We also got an apartment building. Another thanks but no thanks was a timeshare. “When is a gift not a gift” policy is a good thing.

Faith Murray

@Vered Siegel, I seem to be unable to reply to your message - every time I try, it says my message “was not sent”. If you have my direct email, you're welcome to get ahold of me!

Chris Nungesser

That is interesting, @Faith Murray. I had the same issue last week when I tried to message @Vered Siegel. Her email (I hope this isn't inappropriate to share since it's standard Blackbaud format) is first name dot last name at blackbaud dot com.

@Crystal Bruce @Ray Bergman @Elizabeth Perron Tagging you just since this messaging issue has popped up again (I figured it was just me that day).

Elizabeth Perron

Howdy @Faith Murray and @Chris Nungesser,

whenever the platform displays the “message was not sent” notice, it means the person's settings do not include using private messages.

Faith, I am sure it's fine to email Vered the image you have of the weirdest thing:)…(Chris is right about our Blackbaud email addresses. ) Or feel free to email it to community@blackbaud.com and ask us to forward it to Vered.

Does this help?

Love seeing you all connect in community:)!

Elizabeth

Heather MacKenzie

Well, I thought my 4H fair-sold pig that was butchered and sent to us to use in our kitchen was pretty weird when it happened last summer, but now I think it wasn't so weird after reading the other ones!

Laura Robinson

A canoe! Not very weird for our organization (we own and operate an island for educational use), but may sound odd to others.

Robyn Swiderski

I loved all these answers! I just wanted to add ours, which doesn't seem so odd now..
We were gifted with a “winning” lottery ticket; however, it was just a photocopy of the original!
We did not enter that gift

Karen Diener

Well, we didn't accept the gift, but were offered a visit to the set of a movie during filming. The reason we didn't accept it is because it was an adult movie……

Amy Dana

Karen Diener:
Well, we didn't accept the gift, but were offered a visit to the set of a movie during filming. The reason we didn't accept it is because it was an adult movie……

WHAT??? I…wha…how was that pertinent to your organization?

Faith Murray

Robyn Swiderski:
I loved all these answers! I just wanted to add ours, which doesn't seem so odd now..
We were gifted with a “winning” lottery ticket; however, it was just a photocopy of the original!
We did not enter that gift

? I guess you know someone (with the original ticket) who is now very rich. I envision a nudge to your MGO …

Karen Diener

WHAT??? I…wha…how was that pertinent to your organization?

Oh Amy, it was not pertinent at all! We had connections who had obtained visits to the sets of TV shows before, but not anything like this! The person who got it for us was a plastic surgeon in LA - a relative of a family who was volunteering on this particular fundraiser!

We stared at the documentation in disbelief for a LONG time, trying to convince ourselves that we must be misunderstanding. We weren't.

Amy Dana

Karen Diener:

WHAT??? I…wha…how was that pertinent to your organization?

Oh Amy, it was not pertinent at all! We had connections who had obtained visits to the sets of TV shows before, but not anything like this! The person who got it for us was a plastic surgeon in LA - a relative of a family who was volunteering on this particular fundraiser!
We stared at the documentation in disbelief for a LONG time, trying to convince ourselves that we must be misunderstanding. We weren't.

Well, I guess that's one way for the plastic surgeon to really show off their work?

And to be clear, I 100% believe that sex work is work. But it's also a very dicey topic and can be triggering for many people, especially in a work environment.

I guess this is a REALLY good example for why everyone needs a gift acceptance policy.

Ray Bergman

Janis Worley

Based on all these comments I can really see why a gift acceptance policy is good to have! ?

Rachel Bailey

We got this trading card back from one of our direct mail campaigns. I had to enter it as GIK with a fair market value of <$3 ?

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Amy Dana

Rachel Bailey:
We got this trading card back from one of our direct mail campaigns. I had to enter it as GIK with a fair market value of <$3 ?

If you keep it maybe someday it will be worth $5! (I say this as a Broncos fan)