Recording and Receipting Gifts of Stock

A gift of stock is a noncash donation of securities — publicly traded shares transferred directly to the organization, most often through a broker-to-broker transfer. Like other noncash gifts, stock donations have their own substantiation requirements, and the receipt looks different from a cash gift receipt in one key way: it identifies the security transferred rather than stating what it's worth. This article covers what the receipt needs to contain, how to set up a stock gift so Humanitru produces that receipt correctly, and how to track the proceeds if the organization sells the shares.

IRS Receipt Requirements for Gifts of Stock

For any single noncash contribution valued at $250 or more, the donor is responsible for obtaining a contemporaneous written acknowledgment before claiming a deduction, and the organization must assist by providing one. For a stock gift, that acknowledgment must include:

• The organization's name
• A description of the security donated — the issuer, the number of shares, and the date the shares were transferred to the organization — not its dollar value
• A statement that no goods or services were provided in exchange, if that was the case (or a description and good-faith estimate of the fair market value of anything provided in exchange)

The organization never states a dollar value for the gift on the receipt. The IRS treats the value of a stock gift as the average of the high and low trading price on the date of transfer, and valuing the donation for tax purposes is the donor's responsibility, not the nonprofit's. This holds even when the organization sells the shares right away — the sale price has no bearing on what belongs on the receipt.

Setting Up the Stock Gift in Humanitru

Enter the gift as an Action, using these fields to make sure the constituent record and the receipt both hold accurate information:

Action Date

Set the Action Date to the date the stock was transferred into the organization's brokerage account — not the date the gift was entered into Humanitru and not the date the shares were sold. This is the date that must appear on the receipt, and it's also what keeps giving history and reporting accurate to when the contribution legally occurred.

Notes Field (Key Value Pairs)

Use Key Value Pairs in the Notes field to record the details the receipt needs to identify the security, formatted consistently so they merge cleanly and are reportable later, for example:

• Issuer: Apple Inc. (AAPL)
• Shares Donated: 150
• Transfer Date: 03/14/2026

Consistent prefixes ("Issuer:", "Shares Donated:", "Transfer Date:") are what make these fields reportable and mergeable — they function the same way any other Key Value Pair in Notes does.

Merge Fields on the Receipt

When building the acknowledgment letter, merge the Issuer, Shares Donated, and Transfer Date fields from Notes rather than merging a gift amount. This produces a receipt that identifies the security and the transfer date instead of assigning it a value — matching the IRS requirement above and keeping Humanitru out of the business of valuing the gift.

Tracking Sale Proceeds for Finance

Many organizations sell donated stock immediately and want Finance to have a record of the date the shares sold and the proceeds received — for reconciling against the brokerage statement, GL coding, or internal reporting. That's a legitimate thing to track, but it has to be kept separate from what the donor sees on their receipt. There's more than one way to set this up in Humanitru; two common approaches are outlined below.

Scenario 1: One Action

• Action Date = the date the stock was transferred
• Donation Amount = the proceeds of the sale
• Receipt Amount = $0
• Campaign(s) = a Campaign identifying the gift as stock, plus any GL number Campaigns Finance needs
• Notes field / Key Value Pairs = number of shares, stock issuer, and transfer date

With this approach, the acknowledgment letter is built to pull the Receipt Amount field, not the Donation Amount field, so the donor's receipt never shows a dollar figure. Any output that functions as a donation or transaction log — giving statements, deposit reports, and similar exports — should always exclude these gifts by filtering out the stock Campaign, since the Donation Amount field here holds sale proceeds, not a receiptable gift amount.

Scenario 2: Two Actions

Action 1 — the gift itself:

• Action Date = the date the stock was transferred
• Donation Amount = $0
• Receipt Amount = $0
• Campaign(s) = a Campaign identifying the gift as stock
• Notes field / Key Value Pairs = number of shares, stock issuer, and transfer date

Action 2 — the sale proceeds:

• Action Date = the date the proceeds were deposited
• Donation Amount = the proceeds of the sale
• Receipt Amount = $0
• Campaign(s) = a Campaign identifying the gift as stock, plus any GL number Campaigns Finance needs
• Notes field / Key Value Pairs = number of shares, stock issuer, and transfer date

With this approach, the donor's receipt is pulled from Action 1 using the Receipt Amount field, which stays at $0 along with the Donation Amount, so no dollar figure appears. Action 2 should be suppressed from the receipt entirely and, like Action 1, excluded from any donation or transaction log output by filtering out the stock Campaign — keeping the deposit-dated proceeds record available to Finance without it ever surfacing as a receiptable gift.

Sources

IRS Publication 1771, Charitable Contributions — Substantiation and Disclosure Requirements (final authority)

AFP Global, "How to Issue Donation Receipts for Different Types of Gifts"