April 4, 2002 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Eileen Heisman, president of the National Philanthropic Trust, has fielded lots of calls from donors who wanted to give real estate, art, and other items to charities — including unusual ones like a surfboard collection and a World War II–era Army tank.
“Over time, I have gotten really smart at sniffing out the serious callers from the ones who are a little off base or who are less than sincere,” says Ms. Heisman, whose organization is a commercial provider of donor-advised funds, and now has about $400-million in assets. “If you believed everything everyone told you in the first phone call, you would be running down a lot of dead-end paths.”
The Trust receives such calls because it has sought to distinguish itself from competitors by accepting unusual items from donors, selling them, and putting the proceeds into a donor-advised fund.
Ms. Heisman´s experiences with such gifts have helped her devise a system for identifying hidden hazards and pitfalls. She says too often charities accept items that end up costing more in time and money to handle or sell than the items may be worth.
Among the questions she recommends asking before accepting an item:
What details can the donor tell about the gift? The more information a fund raiser has, the better, says Ms. Heisman. “Somebody once tried to gift a piece of real estate in San Francisco that was like a figure-eight shape in between two old gas stations and was completely unusable,” she recalls. She learned that information after pressing for details, she says.
How much does the donor think the item is worth? Ms. Heisman says fund raisers should find out if the gift has been appraised and ask to see a copy of the appraisal. If it has not been appraised, they should ask the donor what they think it is worth, and how that conclusion was reached.
Why does the donor want to give the item away? A man whose father was a surfboard manufacturer once called Ms. Heisman offering his collection of surfboards of various ages, shapes, and sizes. In the end it became apparent to Ms. Heisman that the donor, who had no heirs, wanted to give the collection to an organization that would keep it intact, so she declined the offer.
How was the item acquired? Has it had other owners? The Trust was once offered a valuable painting, and invited a Sotheby´s representative to meet with the donor and Trust officials in Princeton, N.J., to examine the painting and discuss the potential gift. But on the morning of the meeting, the donor abruptly canceled, saying that his sister was a co-owner and had decided there was no way that she could part with the piece. “Sometimes there is a family battle going on and they want to use you as ammunition,” Ms. Heisman warns.
Asking different variations of the same questions, Ms. Heisman says, can help determine details about a potential gift. For example, if she is asking about a donor´s timetable for giving an item away, she will ask: “Do you want to give it now? Five years from now? Is it part of an estate?”
She also advises fund raisers to give potential donors some homework before agreeing to a gift. “Sometimes people call to get you to do the work that they should be doing,” she says. She asks prospective donors to do such tasks as having an item appraised. Those who balk are not serious about making a gift, she says.
Ms. Heisman does her own homework by contacting experts who can help evaluate an item´s worth and flag any financial or legal implications.
She recommends checking with local planned-giving and estate-planning councils. “They will help each other, often free of charge,” she says.
Above all, Ms. Heisman advises fund raisers who get offered donated goods to “pause, take a deep breath, thank the person, and then get on the phone and make as many calls as you can.” She adds, “I tell people to be really cautious. Kick the tires a lot.”
