Key Insights: 2021 Charitable Stock Gifting

According to economics expert Dr. James Russell, diversifying a nonprofit’s fundraising initiatives increases growth by 5x.

Regardless of an organization’s starting contribution level, those consistently raising gifts of noncash assets – and particularly gifts of securities – grew their total contribution amount much faster than those raising only gifts of cash.

Stock Gifting Insights from 2021

Our analysis of stock gifts processed by DonateStock in 2021 produced some very interesting insights:

• Stock gifts ranged from $150 to $150,000 showing a broad range of donors.
• The average stock gift was $5,035* (normalized by removing outliers. When large gifts are included the average was more than $8,000).
• Median stock gift was $1,420, showing that everyday donors who might donate $500 in cash are apt to make larger gifts using appreciated stock.
• Average donor made 1.5 stock gifts, which reflects the desire to support multiple organizations - as well as the ease of using our stock gifting platform.
• Total value of charitable stock gifts per donor was $7,527.

While stock gifting has been seldomly used in the past, it is growing quickly as a preferred means of charitable giving.  As awareness grows about the benefits and ease of stock gifting, nonprofits and the communities they serve stand to benefit significantly.

Other findings should also be of great interest to nonprofits of all sizes:

• Stock gifts greater than $10k comprised 20% of gifts and 80% of proceeds.
• Stock gifts greater than $50k comprised 5% of gifts and 57% of proceeds.
• Top stocks gifted (by total value) were: TSLA, MSFT, AAPL, NVDA and AMZN.
• Top stocks gifted (by frequency) were: AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, TSLA, and INTC.

Reinforcing that stock gifting is not reserved for the wealthiest households, was that 66% of stock gifts were made by donors using retail (self-serve) brokers. Only one-third of stock gifts were made through full-service brokers that cater to the wealthiest donors.

Our mission is to transform charitable giving by making stock gifting easy and accessible to all nonprofits and donors. When you donate stock, everyone wins: donors save on taxes and nonprofits receive larger pre-tax gifts.  We look forward to seeing what 2022 has in store for charitable stock gifting.