Stock Gifts (part 2 of 3)

Posted on August 26, 2016 Written by

2016 04-April 26 (9)

When stock is donated, it must be acknowledged by the church. It can be posted on the person’s giving record so that there is permanent record of the gift. It is also an excellent practice to send the donor a separate letter with the details of the transaction. Below is a sample letter which I use regularly.

 

Mr. and Mrs. John Smith

1234 Maple Ave.

Hometown, US 12345-6789

 

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith:

 

Thank you for your contribution to Grace Family Fellowship. Your gift of stock was:

 

Name of stock:……………………………………….. Apple, Inc. (AAPL)

Number of shares:………………………………….. 25 shares

Date of transfer:…………………………………….. January 3, 2018

Stock high on date of transfer:…………………………… $412.50

Stock low on date of transfer:……………………………. $409.00

Average value per share on date of transfer:………. $410.75

Total value of contribution:…………………………… $10,268.75

 

Fund contributed to:

  • 2018 Operating Ministry Budget

 

The date of transfer is the date on which the stock was transferred to Grace Family Fellowship. The IRS requires that stock gifts be valued at the average of the high and low of the stock on the date of transfer. Grace Family Fellowship sells all stock gifts immediately. The cost of the commission and fees related to the sale is netted from the value of your gift.

 

For IRS purposes, I must inform you that the gifts contained in this letter are based on intangible religious benefits. You did not receive any goods or services from Grace Family Fellowship for this contribution.

 

Thank you again for your gift. Your continued support of the ministries of Grace Family Fellowship is greatly appreciated. If I may be of further help please let me know.

 

Sincerely,

 

Church Administrator

 

Lead On!

Steve

 

Filed Under: budget, church administration, church finances, generosity Tagged: , , ,

Stock Gifts (part 1 of 3)

Posted on August 19, 2016 Written by

2016 05-May 10 (2)

Virtually all stock in the US is common stock. There are lots of other kinds of stock (preferred, private, etc.) but common stock is typically what is traded on the major stock exchanges. Almost all stock is now held in “street accounts” or an electronic account in a brokerage. Paper stock is available but it is cumbersome to transfer so most people use electronic stocks. For purposes of this post, stock gifts include mutual funds.

 

Stocks which have increased in value since their purchase are an excellent way for members to make gifts to their church without incurring tax consequences. Churches can accept paper stock gifts without having an account with a stock broker. However, only brokerage firms with selling rights in a stock exchange (think NYSE, New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street) can sell the stock. Churches without an account with a broker cannot accept electronically transferred stock from a member’s street account.

 

Churches which may get stock gifts should be pro-active and establish a brokerage account. This will require the authorized body of the church to approve a required corporate resolution (the wording is provided by the brokerage firm) which authorizes specific people in the church to sell stock. Typically the people who are named on the resolution are the church’s treasurer, chairperson of the Finance Committee, and the staff person responsible for the church’s finances.

 

Once the account is established and the resolution is approved, then the church can accept and sell donated stock without much trouble. All stock gifts must be acknowledged by the church and there is a specific way to value stock gifts.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: accounting, budget, church administration, church finances, generosity Tagged: , , ,

IRA Gifts

Posted on August 5, 2016 Written by

2016 05-May 31 (9)

In December 2015, the US Congress made permanent a tax break that benefits older donors: the ability to gift to a charity funds directly from an IRA (Individual Retirement Account). There are several rules for this:

  • Donors must be 70.5 years or older
  • IRA gifts cannot exceed $100,000
  • Gifts must go to a 501(c)(3) – FYI: the IRS considers all churches in the US to be 501(c)(3)s.

 

There are some interesting nuances to IRA gifts:

  • The IRA transfer does not show up in the donor’s income but it does meet the mandatory RMD (required minimum distribution) of IRAs
  • The church must provide an acknowledgement letter to the donor but the IRA gift does not show up on the donor gift statement from the charity. The reason is that because this IRA amount doesn’t show up on the donor’s Form 1040 under income, it can’t show up on the Form 1040 as a contribution (this prevents double-dipping).
  • Checks sent to churches from an IRA sometimes do not have the name of the donor on it. The church will need to research who the donor is in order to send an acknowledgement.
  • This gift will benefit some donors more than others. Thus, it is in the interest of the donors to consult their tax or accounting professional to determine if this will help their individual situation.

 

Churches will be wise to encourage IRA gifts from eligible donors. The following text can be included in the Sunday bulletin during the year.

  • The IRS permits people to give from their IRA (Individual Retirement Account) directly to the church. This transfer can be a significant tax advantage. Please consult your tax or accounting professional to see if you should make a gift from your IRA to the church.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: budget, church administration, church finances, generosity Tagged: , ,

Life-Changing Benevolence

Posted on August 11, 2015 Written by

Traditional Benevolence: the church is a collection point for charitable items such as food, clothing, household items, and money to help with other items such as rent and medical expenses. Church members should be encouraged to be generous with their gifts and not just give their leftovers or items they want to discard. I encourage churches to have a regular collection time; this can be monthly, every Communion Sunday, every 5th Sunday, etc. – just pick and stick with something.

I feel there is a much better and more biblically based form of benevolence but it is much harder and far less common in churches. I encourage you to seriously consider this form and decide if your church is doing benevolence to make its members feel good or to have a serious impact on the lives of others. This direction is much harder and requires the church to being a lot more intentional about what it wants to accomplish.

Benevolence That Changes Lives: The church should not be a distribution point for benevolence. Instead, churches should partner with local non-profits who are doing this type of work with excellence (key word).

  • The church can approach these local orgs and offer supplies (food, clothing, etc.), money (for benevolence and even for operations), and volunteers (church members who want to help others). Every non-profit you approach will jump at the chance to get more of these resources.
  • An understanding can be reached between the church and the org regarding overt/covert evangelism (you’re not asking my opinion but I suggest that church volunteers ONLY raise that subject if they are asked why they are doing that – the door is then open for a positive reply without shoving Jesus down someone’s throat).
  • This method allows recipients to go to places in an area of town they are more comfortable with than having to walk into a church (which is intimidating to non-church folk). This makes church members get out of their comfort zone (their church) and into the area of town where they aren’t comfortable but where the hurting and needy are located – church members need to suck it up and get over their fears. After all, Jesus went out to the highways and byways and didn’t wait for people to come to him (though many did).
  • This method allows a church to partner with an org that is far more skilled at distributing resources and determining who are the scammers and who are the truly needy. The partner org most likely has a database where they keep track of who has been helped, for what purpose, and how often.
  • This allows the church admin assistants (the first point of contact for many recipients) to focus on their work instead of answering the phones. And frankly, some of the needy can be scary (though almost never dangerous) and that can affect the work product of the church’s admin(s).
  • If more and more churches would partner with local orgs, the chronic needy would know where to turn for regular help (instead of going from church to church) and those orgs might be able to offer additional services such as job training and placement (to address long-term needs, not weekly needs).

I will say up front that moving your benevolence offsite gives less “glory” to your church and your members might complain about that. However, this is not about meeting the church’s needs but about helping others. God gets the glory (period). It’s not about us – it’s about us being servants to help others.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: generosity, strategy Tagged: ,

Board of Directors versus Customers

Posted on June 23, 2015 Written by

The board of directors of an organization is charged with supervising the leader and helping set the strategic vision and goals for that organization. Board members are usually selected for their vision and wisdom. Boards are strategic-thinking with the long view. Sometimes boards are accused of being dispassionate and uncaring about employees and even customers.

 

Customers are sometimes quite passionate about what they want and sometimes even have “what’s in it for me right now” mindset. They have a need for immediate gratification – that’s why they’re in the store. Customers are occasionally vocal about their needs and that emotion can lead to tense interactions.

 

A church is unique in that church members are both board members and customers. Sometimes a member will act like a board member and sometimes like a customer – and sometimes the member will do that in the same meeting.  That puts church staff in a tough position – they have to learn when a member is acting in what capacity. Church staff are caught in-between and that can lead to confusing messages to them.

 

Most of the time, members think and act like customers. That is a good rule of thumb. Church staff need to always think like board members. Leaders act like board members.

All key church committee members must act like board members (that’s what they are in that role). And in church business meetings, members must be encouraged to think like board members not act like customers.

 

Consider your own situation: are you teaching your church leaders to be board members or customers?

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: generosity, leadership, strategy Tagged: , ,

Does this add value?

Posted on May 12, 2015 Written by

It’s a simple question but it’s an important one. When making a decision, ask yourself that question:

  • Does this add value to my organization?
  • Does this add value to my staff?
  • Does this add value to our goals and mission?
  • Does this add value to the conversation?

 

This is a key question which I ask when I’m in meetings. I want to know if what we’re talking about helps the organization and its missions. Too many times I (and probably you) have been in meetings where an idea is presented and it is received without question because it sounds good, it comes from a person of influence, or there is some money available to do it.

 

I challenge you to not accept ideas just because of their source. Instead, when a concept is presented, determine if it is worth doing and one of the questions to ask is, “Does this add value?” However, don’t get into the cycle of “analysis paralysis.” Make a decision based on the current information and when you have new info, evaluate the prior decision, and then keep the decision or make a new decision. But in every case, ask if this action will add value to the org’s mission.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: budget, generosity, leadership, strategy Tagged: , , ,

Outreach

Posted on January 27, 2015 Written by

Churches are struggling to attract young people. I’ve seen dozens of churches look at this and most of them throw up their hands and do nothing because they don’t know what to do. There are two sides to this, kind of a “chicken and egg” scenario.

First: you need to find the people who you are targeting. I can’t emphasize enough that the target audience for every church should be young families, aged 20s, 30s, and 40s. Those families have young children and teenagers. Those families become the future of the church, especially if they are brought into leadership of the church. Now, where to find them? Frankly, everywhere. These families are millennials and reports I’ve seen say that they do not respond at all to door knocks (like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses) – in fact, they are very much turned off by them. However, it is easy to find them because every Saturday they are at a ball field with their kids. What if your church had a pop-up tent/canopy that went to these events and had a table with free water and snacks for the families and kids. That would say that “we’re here and we’re a family-oriented church.” It gives the volunteers the opportunity to speak to the moms and dads in a relaxed atmosphere. The same could be done at a local farmers’ markets or other community activities – some type of presence where your name is visible to a younger crowd.

Second: this is much, much, much harder. Once you attract families and they actually show up at church, do you have programming that is excellent and of such great quality that the kids AND parents want to come back. You need to have programming that is so outstanding that you get a reputation for being excellent. Excellence will attract people, especially a younger generation.

Here is the conundrum: you need an excellent program (that implies substantial number of kids and young people) so that when you go out to solicit, they’ll have already heard about it and be eager to come. The answer: work on both sides of the opportunity – recruiting people to come and developing an excellent program – so that they support each other and you develop synergy.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: budget, generosity, strategy, young adults Tagged: , , ,

Protectiveness

Posted on September 23, 2014 Written by

One aspect of the life-cycle of churches has to do with their possessions.

  • Early on the church has almost nothing. The church is typically pretty open about sharing its resources (loaning chairs and tables for instance) with others.
  • When the church gets buildings and even more possessions, the church develops policies which guide when and how the building can be rented and items loaned. The ultimate goal is to protect the church from litigation, but these procedures usually evolve to protect the church from outside groups or non-members who might damage the building or items.
  • Finally, a church shrinks so that eventually everything it has is given away in its last act of generosity. Its possessions and buildings are sold or handed to another church.

All churches struggle with providing a balance between being generous with what it has to help its own members, its community, and other churches—being cautious so that what it has accrued over the years is not lost or damaged. That is a fine line to walk, and it requires a lot of active decisions.

I can’t offer an easy answer to this. I can ask churches to share as much as possible with others just as others shared with them when they were a young church. Don’t give everything away, but don’t be stingy either. Develop a balance by asking one question: What is the motive or reason someone wants to borrow or use something your church owns?

If it is meant to help one person have personal profit and it isn’t church related, then the church should walk away from that. But if the goal is to help the community or another church, then the church should seriously consider (but not rubber stamp) that opportunity. Be generous, but don’t give away everything. Don’t be greedy, but seek times when you can genuinely help others and other organizations.

Lead On!

Steve

 

Filed Under: generosity, strategy, wisdom Tagged: , ,
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