Anonymous Stock Gift

Claire Sherman
Claire Sherman
Third Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Altru® General Discussions

What's best practice (or even possible) when it comes to entering a check for a gift of stock, using Altru, when we do not know and have been unable to identify the donor(s)?

Comments

  • Carlene Johnson
    Carlene Johnson Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Data Health #3 First Reply

    Hi Claire,

    Here is what I have done in the past:

    • Create a record called “Unknown Stock Donor”
    • Add the gift to that record as a holding place. This will allow you to deposit the check and move forward with anything you need to do with finance/business office.
    • Reach out to your broker and ask them to research who the donor is.
    • If that doesn't work, reach out to the broker who sent the stock on behalf of the donor and explain that you received the gift but don't know who the donor is.
    • If they don't want to tell you for “privacy” reasons, ask them to reach out to the donor to let the donor know that the organization is unaware that they are the donor, and that the charity is asking the donor to contact you directly.
    • Once donor is identified, move the gift from the Unknown Stock Donor record to the actual donor record through merging records.
    • Issue any necessary receipts/acknowledgements.

    Hope that helps!

  • Chris Nungesser
    Chris Nungesser
    Fifth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    Hi Claire,

    What @Carlene Johnson wrote is great and will definitely work. I especially like her suggestion about reaching out to the donor's broker through your broker.

    Similar to what Carlene mentioned, there is a constituent record in my Altru for instances when we are unable to identify the donor. Perhaps we have a donations jar out at an event and people put cash in it. We would record that cash total on this record. So if a stock gift came in where we could not immediately identify the donor, it would also get recorded on this Unknown/Anonymous Donor record. And we put as many details as we can in the revenue Reference field to help us down the road.

    The only step where I go a different route than Carlene, is that I keep that unknown/anonymous record on a permanent basis. If we can identify the donor later, then I will go to the Revenue Transaction Page and click on Change Constituent on Payment. Then I'll move it over to the proper record. So I'd do that instead of merging. But merging also works. I just think it's cleaner to have one unknown/anonymous constituent instead of creating one for each instance.

    Chris ?

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