Treasure Trove or Trash Bin?

Nonprofit groups look for appropriate ways to showcase, or politely rebuff, oddball gifts

A giant blue topaz. A collection of scripts from the Charlie’s Angels television show. A parade float. A ski center.

Such items are

among the many unusual gifts offered to charities in recent years. While some strange items can be sold for cash or put to good use with a little creativity, others are costly or difficult to maintain. Rotary International was once offered a fully decorated parade float, but simply had no place to keep the room-size item.

Other bizarre gifts come with hidden hazards. For instance, one group was offered a drain-cleaning machine that turned out to have electrocuted its original owner. Even if charity officials plan to sell an offbeat item, it may be more time-consuming than they realize to figure out its value, market it to prospective buyers, and handle the sale.

But fund raisers worry that rejecting a donor’s much-beloved item could offend someone who may also have significant cash or other resources to contribute. And even when a donor isn’t extremely wealthy, charities try to handle rejections carefully so that they don’t develop a reputation for being too picky or ungrateful. Others say fund raisers are often reluctant to turn down any item that can add to their bottom line, since their performance is often measured by how much they bring in each year. And if an item ends up causing lawsuits or other problems, the fund raiser is not necessarily the person who has to clean up the mess.

Even something as innocuous as the Charlie’s Angels scripts can pose numerous questions for a charity. The California university they were recently offered to must figure out what it will cost to maintain them, if any copyright rules restrict their use, and what precautions must be taken to keep them from deteriorating.

The number of donors who want to offer items that don’t have anything to do with a charity’s mission or are difficult to sell has prompted many large charities to adopt formal policies spelling out what they will accept and why, but some small groups have yet to do so, experts say. Some charities are so weary of handling offers of unwanted items that they are trying to better publicize what they really need — and what they don’t. Adding to the frustration: Many donors keep “shopping” a gift to groups even after repeated rejections, sometimes not realizing that the donation isn’t worth as much as they think it is, or simply doesn’t fit any charity’s mission.

“People sometimes try to use charities as a dumping ground for unusual assets that they don’t want or need anymore,” says Eileen Heisman, president of the National Philanthropic Trust, in Philadelphia. “They just want to pass that problem to the charity so they can take a deduction.”

The most important question for fund raisers to ask, she and others say, is, How does this item relate to my charity’s mission?

Sometimes it’s clear when it makes sense to accept an unusual gift. In 1900, Edward Whymper — a famed climber who had made the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 — offered his ice ax to the Appalachian Mountain Club. The club now displays the ax on a fireplace mantle in the executive director’s office in its Boston headquarters, where it has served as a source of inspiration to past and current leaders of the organization, says Rob Burbank, a spokesman for the group.

For charities that have accepted unusual gifts, the key to turning a potential dud into a jewel is often the ingenuity of the charity’s fund raisers and administrators. And in some cases, gems are offered right from the start. Old Dominion University, in Virginia, accepted a 3,855-carat blue topaz worth $38,000. The donor, who cut the softball-size stone himself, gave it in memory of his son, an alumnus who had died, and fund raisers say they doubt they would have gotten it if the donor thought it would be sold. Because the university mascot is named “Big Blue,” fund raisers thought the unusual color of the stone — topazes are usually yellow — gave it special meaning, so they put it on display in the student convocation hall with a memorial plaque.

Among the other unusual gifts that charities have put to use:

Suture thread. Binghamton University, in New York, recently was offered suture material that was no longer sterile and therefore not usable on people. While such a gift would be considered worthless by most nonprofit organizations, Laura Terriquez-Kasey, a Binghamton nursing faculty member who also worked part-time at the hospital that wanted to donate the goods, knew that the nursing school was in dire need of the medical thread for students to practice suturing. Since the students typically practice on pigs’ knuckles or pigs’ legs, it did not matter that the material was not considered fit to use on humans.

Chocolates. At the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., associate director of development Sandi McKinley was unsure how to respond when she received an unsolicited call from Guylian Chocolates offering 10 to 15 cases of candy. But she accepted the offer, and the theater now gives the chocolates to its patrons during intermissions.

“It is a great audience giveaway, and some of our sleepier audience members need the sugar high in between acts,” jokes Ms. McKinley. She also sees the chocolates as a simple tool for cultivating good will among theatergoers, who aren’t necessarily donors — but might be someday.

The company followed up its initial gift with small packages of chocolates the theater used as a thank you to donors during its fund-raising gala last spring.

A horse carriage. At the New Bolton Center, a campus of the University of Pennsylvania’s veterinary school, fund raisers use the several antique carriages received from one donor and three Morgan horses given by another to court potential donors.

Bruce Rappoport, an associate dean who is also an accomplished “whip,” or carriage driver, takes the carriage and horses to horse shows, agricultural fairs, and other public events, to serve as roving ambassadors for the school.

“We have found it a marvelous way of taking the school’s message out,” says P. Jane Simone, New Bolton Center’s development director. Besides generating public attention for the school, the carriage team has helped raise at least $1-million in donations from sponsors of events where the carriage has appeared.

Donor’s Creativity

In some cases, it’s the creativity of a donor that shows a charity how what seems like an odd gift is a perfect match for an organization’s mission. The Resource Center of Dallas, a charity that serves people with AIDS, would never have put Wedgwood china on its wish list.

But Earl Lynn Buckman, a Wedgwood antique dealer, offered the group a complete service for 144, worth more then $30,000, to use for its program to provide hot meals to people with the AIDS virus. Craig McDaniel, a board member who is vice president of a public-relations firm, recalls Mr. Buckman imploring the charity’s officials: “You’re not going to let those boys eat off paper plates!”

Today the organization serves meals to more than 100 people daily using a second set of Wedgwood also donated by Mr. Buckman after the initial set was worn from heavy use. “They may sit on folding chairs at rickety tables,” observes Mr. McDaniel, “but our clients dine off the finest china to be had.”

In many cases donors aren’t motivated by such good-hearted intentions, and fund raisers “do need to look a gift horse in the mouth,” says John Elbare, a philanthropic adviser in Tampa, Fla., who specializes in planned giving and other issues.

In the 1980s, when Mr. Elbare was executive director of the Human Development Center in Tampa, Fla., an organization that works with the mentally retarded, he was offered a drain-cleaning machine from an insurance company. After searching for more information, Mr. Elbare learned that the plumber who originally owned the machine had been electrocuted while using it.

Getting expert help in deciding whether to accept a gift is important, says Bruce Flessner, a fund-raising consultant in Minneapolis. He recalls that a museum was offered a high-end, custom-designed racing sailboat, which it planned to sell and pocket the profits. But the museum consulted sailing experts and learned that such racing boats hold little market value if they have not performed better than fourth or fifth in races in their classes. The museum ended up declining the gift, concluding that the boat would not have generated enough income to make the time and effort of selling it worthwhile.

“Originally they thought, ‘Well, [the donor] built it for a million, it must be worth something,’” says Mr. Flessner. “But he just wanted a big tax deduction.”

Charities should be particularly cautious about accepting gifts that have been “shopped around,” says Mr. Flessner, “where people approach more than one charity and they don’t have a particular linkage to you, they just want to get rid of the gift.”

Rejecting Items

For many fund raisers, turning down a gift can pose a challenge almost as great as accepting a useless item.

Experts say having a formal gift-acceptance policy in place can help ease the sting of rejection. Patti Bender, a planned-giving officer at the University of Wisconsin–Stout University, in Menomonie, Wis., recalled a donor who wanted to give away a small ski facility on condition that the university never sell it.

Ms. Bender says she found it helpful to be able to pull out the university’s gift-acceptance policy, which states that the university does not accept real estate without retaining the right to sell it at some future date, and that any exceptions must be approved by a university real-estate committee or its board of directors. “Since those meetings just happen three times a year, that will also tend to dissuade someone from doing something that we think doesn’t fit our mission or our best interest,” Ms. Bender adds.

Many fund raisers say that when they can’t use a gift themselves, they will steer potential donors to another nonprofit group that might be a more appropriate recipient.

Some groups try to head off unusable gifts before any offers are made. The Boston Conservatory recently published an article in its newsletter spelling out which items it considers helpful (fine musical instruments, original scores and manuscripts, and compact disks) and which are too obsolete to be useful (albums, audio cassettes, and reel-to-reel recordings).

Setting Limits

Sometimes nonprofit groups learn the hard way which objects to reject. Sandia Prep School, in Albuquerque, has been offered Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes, an office building, and Arabian horses. After incurring higher costs than expected in selling some items it couldn’t use, it now will only accept items when a buyer for the goods has been lined up in advance or when the school has a good purpose for the item.

Susan Walton, the school’s development director, says that, as much as possible, when the school must reject an item, she tries to help donors reach that conclusion themselves.

She says the approach has helped donors not feel offended, adding: “When someone loves your school and tells you that they want to help you, and it becomes obvious that it is not really a good gift, they will find another way to make a gift.”