A transfer notice lands from your brokerage account: 40 shares of something, received yesterday, donor field blank or marked “anonymous.” Development wants it counted, finance wants it reconciled, and someone has to put it in Altru. Two questions decide how you record it. Do you actually know who gave it? And does your Altru setup have a payment method that fits securities?
First, figure out which kind of “anonymous” this is
“Anonymous” covers two very different situations, and they get recorded differently.
- Known donor who wants no public credit. You know exactly who gave, because they told you, their advisor called, or the broker’s transfer letter names them. They just don’t want their name in the annual report, on a donor wall, or in a press release.
- Truly unidentified gift. The shares arrived and nobody can tell you where they came from. This happens more often with stock than with checks, because transfer paperwork doesn’t always travel with the shares.
Before choosing one, spend a day trying to identify the donor. Ask your broker for any transfer details they have, and check whether anyone on staff was expecting a gift. A gift that starts out “unidentified” often turns out to belong to a known donor who forgot to send the letter.
Recording a known donor who wants anonymity
Put the gift on the donor’s real constituent record. That keeps their giving history accurate, makes the gift count toward any pledge or recognition level, and stops them from getting solicited as if they’d never given. Anonymity is a display choice, not a data choice.
Then make the preference impossible to miss:
- Look for an anonymous-giving flag on the constituent record. Many Blackbaud products have one. If you’re not sure whether your Altru has it, or how it affects reports, check in a sandbox or ask Blackbaud support before relying on it.
- If there’s no flag, use an attribute or constituency such as “Anonymous donor,” and add a note on the record and on the revenue itself explaining the donor’s wishes and the date they asked.
- Fix your recognition queries. Any query or report that feeds an annual report, donor wall, or event program should exclude constituents with that flag or attribute. Test it by running the list and confirming the donor isn’t on it. This is the step that gets missed, and it’s the one that causes the awkward phone call.
Be clear about what anonymity means for the donor: you still send them a tax acknowledgment. Anonymous to the public is not anonymous to the IRS.
Recording a gift from an unidentified donor
Create one shared constituent record, something like “Anonymous Donor,” and use it for every unidentified gift. Don’t make a new record each time. Separate placeholder records clutter searches, inflate constituent counts, and become duplicate cleanup later.
Give that record a note explaining what it’s for, and exclude it from mailings and appeals. If you identify the donor later, move the revenue to the real constituent rather than leaving it on the placeholder. How easily Altru lets you reassign an existing revenue record depends on whether it’s already been posted to your general ledger, so talk to whoever handles batches and posting before you change anything.
Choosing a payment method for stock
This is where setups vary. Some organizations have a stock or securities payment method configured. Others don’t, and staff end up recording stock as “Other.” Check your payment method options on a test donation before you enter the real one.
- If a stock or securities option exists, use it, and record the issuer, ticker, and number of shares in the fields or notes it provides.
- If it doesn’t, use your most generic non-cash method and put the stock details in a note on the revenue. Then agree with finance on that convention so everyone records stock the same way. If you find yourself doing this often, it’s worth asking your Altru administrator or Blackbaud support whether a dedicated payment method can be added.
What amount to enter
Record the gift at its fair market value on the date your organization received the shares. A common method for publicly traded stock is the average of that day’s high and low prices. Confirm the method with your finance team or auditor and use it every time.
Don’t record the sale proceeds as the gift amount. If you sell the shares a week later for less, or the broker deducts a fee, that difference is an investment loss or expense in your accounting system. It doesn’t reduce the donation. Recording the net proceeds understates the gift and won’t match what the donor reports.
If the stock was used to pay toward an existing pledge, apply it to that pledge like any other payment so the balance updates.
The acknowledgment letter
For a non-cash gift like stock, the acknowledgment should describe what was received, meaning the number of shares and the company, along with the date. It generally shouldn’t state the dollar value. The donor figures out the deduction. Many organizations keep a separate acknowledgment template for stock gifts for this reason. Ask your tax advisor to approve the wording once, then reuse it.
For a known anonymous donor, send the letter to them as usual. For an unidentified gift, there’s no one to send it to. Note on the revenue that no acknowledgment was sent and why, so nobody flags it as overdue later.
Quick answers
Should the anonymous flag go on the person or the gift?
Usually the person, if they want all their giving kept private. If they only want this one gift kept quiet, note it on the revenue and handle it in your recognition query. Write down which convention your team uses.
The donor surfaced six months later. Now what?
Move the gift to their real record, send the acknowledgment, and check with finance first if the original revenue has already been posted.
