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Charitable Fundraising: Moving Beyond Cash

October 23, 2025

For those who serve on a nonprofit board, seeking non-cash donations for the charity may provide a more comfortable way to generate assets.
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Many of us love nonprofit board service given the potential it provides to do good, as well as the psychic and social rewards that may come with charitable involvement. However, one often challenging task is fundraising, conjuring up the prospect of “hitting up” friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues for cash donations.

Fundraising is, of course, a necessary task that helps ensure the organization can meet its current goals and lays the groundwork for future endeavors. And as a steward of your nonprofit, you have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure its financial health and long-term sustainability.

While fundraising, especially for cash donations, may never be completely comfortable, some gifting approaches may be easier on the donor and therefore more viable for you to solicit. We explore a few possibilities in this article, focusing on the advantages for the donor from a tax-planning perspective.

1. Gifts of Appreciated Securities

Especially in uncertain times, prospective donors may hesitate to give away cash because they see it as a direct reduction of their disposable income or savings. However, they may be less emotionally attached to securities that have appreciated over time. If donors give away appreciated securities held for over a year, they can bypass capital gains tax and potentially claim a charitable deduction based on the securities’ fair market value at the time of donation. This option is often easier psychologically than writing a check or making an online cash gift.

If you focus fundraising conversations on gifts of such securities, you may get a more positive response, making these assets a strategic and effective fundraising target. Corporate executives may be especially receptive to securities donations. They may own several tranches of company shares, so the gifts can help them diversify out of a long-term concentrated position while offsetting the taxes they may endure from receiving newer shares or units as compensation.

This may be a particularly good time of year to raise the idea of securities donations. The fourth quarter often brings portfolio reallocation into focus, frequently involving tax-loss harvesting and trimming highly appreciated or concentrated positions. Donating such securities to charity can be part of this process.1

Donating Appreciated Stock: A Real-Life Example

Claire supported her local food bank for some time by writing annual checks of $25,000 to $30,000. In a year when she recognized significant income, she noticed that she had concentrated positions in long-held appreciated equities and wished to diversify her portfolio. Instead of her usual cash donation, she chose to donate stock with a fair market value of $750,000. Not only did this allow her to bypass capital gains tax on the appreciation, but she received an itemized charitable deduction (up to the allowable deduction limit) and could carry forward the excess deduction to future years.2 On terms that were helpful to the donor, this shift in the form of giving increased the food bank’s fundraising from a single individual, in our view demonstrating the potential benefits of securities gifts as a way to move the needle, even within an existing donor base.

2. Qualified Charitable Distributions from IRAs

Normally, distributions from a traditional Individual Retirement Account (IRA) are taxable when received. However, through qualified charitable distributions (QCDs), IRA owners age 70½ and over can transfer up to $108,000 to charity tax-free in 2025 (subject to an annual inflation adjustment in subsequent years). QCDs are available regardless of whether the IRA owner itemizes deductions.

For those 73 and older, QCDs also count toward one’s required minimum distribution (RMD) for the year. QCDs remain tax-free as long as they are paid directly from the IRA to an eligible charitable organization (generally an operating public charity, as opposed to a DAF sponsor or private foundation).3

3. Distributions From Donor-Advised Funds

To simplify charitable efforts, many donors have pivoted to giving through a donor-advised fund (DAF), which serves as a single tax-free account to support multiple charities. Given this trend, you may wish to specifically identify DAFs as a source of funding and inquire as to whether potential donors have established one. As donors will have already parted with assets in contributing to a DAF, the distribution will not erode the cash or liquid assets they might be retaining for other purposes.

You can encourage your nonprofit to promote DAF giving on its website, for example linking to DAF Direct, an online tool that lets donors initiate grant recommendations from their DAFs directly through the organization’s site or fundraising campaigns.

4. Grants From Private Foundations

Some donors may serve on the boards of family foundations, thus providing an additional source of potential funds. In general, private foundations must make charitable distributions of at least 5% of the value of their assets annually. Sometimes private foundations struggle to meet this requirement by year-end. By highlighting your organization’s mission and impact, and positioning your nonprofit as a worthy recipient, you can make it easier for donors to fulfill their foundation’s annual payout obligation. This not only helps them comply with legal requirements but allows your organization to benefit from additional grant funding from motivated donors.

Building Relationships

As a board member, you play a crucial role in cultivating and stewarding relationships with donors. By engaging donors personally (without directly asking for cash gifts)—expressing gratitude, keeping them informed about the organization’s impact, and inviting their input—you build trust and deepen their connection to your mission.

These relationships remain essential to fundraising success, as research confirms that donors who feel valued and appreciated are far more likely to give generously and consistently.4 Effective stewardship not only helps retain existing supporters, but also encourages them to increase their commitment over time, ensuring your organization’s ongoing fiscal health and sustainability.

Conclusion: Capitalizing on Non-Cash Giving Opportunities

Keep in mind that fundraising extends far beyond asking for cash: As a board member, you can champion creative, tax-efficient giving strategies that benefit both your organization and its supporters. From donations of long-term appreciated securities to IRA QCDs to DAF and private foundation grants, these alternatives can help you fulfill your fiduciary duty while building stronger donor relationships and ensuring ongoing fiscal health.

As the year draws to a close, take the opportunity to engage your network and inform donors of these tax-efficient alternative giving options (while encouraging them to consult their tax advisors) to raise support for your organization this year and beyond.

Keep in Mind…Charitable Deduction Rules

The federal tax code imposes deduction limits on charitable contributions (e.g., 30% of adjusted gross income for donations of long-term appreciated securities to public charities, with any excess potentially deductible in the following five years). Donors should consult with their tax advisors before taking any action and in determining optimal amounts to give.

Nonprofits, for their part, must send donors a contemporaneous written acknowledgment of any single monetary contribution or noncash contribution valued at $250 or more. Donors will need this documentation as back-up in claiming charitable deductions on income tax returns.

1 Partnership interests may not be suitable for donation. Contact your tax advisor for information.

2 For itemized deductions beginning next year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) caps the tax benefit at $0.35 for each dollar of itemized deductions rather than the full $0.37 per dollar previously received by taxpayers in the top tax bracket. Also beginning next year, this new law creates a 0.5% floor on charitable contributions for itemizers, meaning that individuals who itemize will only earn a charitable deduction for giving in excess of 0.5% of their charitable contribution base (i.e., their adjusted gross income [AGI] calculated without taking into account any charitable giving). The tax impact of such changes depends specifically on individual facts and circumstances, and so donors should consult with their tax advisors on their charitable planning under these rules.

3 Note that because IRS Form 1099-R lacks a special code for a QCD, donors must notify their accountant of the gift to avoid unwarranted taxation, and should also obtain written acknowledgment from the charity.

4 Source: Jen Shang, Adrian Sargeant, Kathryn Carpenter and Harriet Day, Learning to Say Thank You: The Role of Donor Acknowledgments, Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy, September 2018. “In a database where the average number of gifts made by donors is three, a thank-you letter reaffirming the difference that their donations made increased average gifts by 60%...in comparison to a control group of donors who did not receive this thank-you communication.”

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