Why We Created DonateStock

The past year of Covid 19 challenges has actually forced many of us to think outside the box and find new ways of working and solving problems. As entrepreneurs, we naturally look for opportunity in times of change or chaos. 

One of the big problems we noticed was how nonprofits were struggling to raise funds with events being cancelled and both individual and corporate giving declining. We believe in their importance and the valuable services they provide our communities and wanted to find a meaningful way to help.  

At the same time, 2020 was turning out to be an amazing year for the stock market. While millions of Americans were turning to nonprofits for help, millions of investors were earning massive gains.

The fact that nonprofits were struggling while investors were living their best lives ever begged the obvious questions: Why aren’t investors donating some of their gains to charities, schools and foundations? What could be done to make it easier to donate stock?  

This is when the idea for DonateStock was born. Several years ago one of our founders had learned about the benefits of donating stock from a financial advisor. Specifically, you can avoid capital gains tax while deducting the full value of the stock donation - it seemed too good to be true. But as he soon learned, the process of donating stock was archaic, time consuming and cumbersome. It took hours of research, phone calls and paperwork to make the donation. In the end, the benefits were not worth the hassle. That was the last time he tried to make a stock donation.

As the situation worsened for nonprofits in 2020, we did some research to find out if anyone had addressed the challenges of donating stock. When we found there were no viable stock donation solutions, we realized this was a problem we had to solve – by educating investors and making stock gifting easy, we could help nonprofits unlock billions in new funding. This was the impetus for launching DonateStock, Inc.  

Our mission is to transform charitable giving by making it easy for nonprofits to access stock donations. We created DonateStock.com as a win-win-win scenario for donors, nonprofits and the communities they serve: 

• Donors enjoy significant tax advantages - when they donate stock they can avoid capital gains taxes while deducting the full market value of their stock gift.

• Nonprofits benefit from the fact that pre-tax stock donations are often much larger than after-tax cash donations. When you donate stock, nonprofits receive the proceeds that would otherwise be paid to the IRS. A study by Texas Tech University also showed that nonprofits receiving both securities and cash were able to grow contributions at a much faster rate than those only receiving cash.

• Communities benefit as stock donations can fund investments in the valuable services provided by charities, foundations schools and faith-based nonprofits.. 

We’ve now streamlined the entire stock gifting process online. In just 10 minutes, investors can make stock donations to the charity of their choice on DonateStock.com.  

It’s also easy for nonprofits to sign up - they just need a registered EIN and a brokerage account to receive donations.  Nonprofits also save time and hassle tracking and reconciling stock donations through our nonprofit dashboard.

Besides making the process easier, DonateStock also helps nonprofits grow the volume of and value of stock donations. We provide a marketing playbook with copy, images, posts and email templates along with hands on-support. With our help nonprofits can start harvesting stock donations in no time. 

We also seek to help nonprofits build their brand on our website and in our marketing efforts.  We also work with brokerages to help their clients make smarter pre-tax donations of stock vs. cash.

Just as technology helped nonprofits increase communications and engagement with their audiences through websites and social media, DonateStock now holds the key to accessing new sources of funding.  Our goal is to make stock gifting mainstream, in doing so helping thousands of organizations impact millions of lives.  

Learn more about how your charity, school, foundation or church can tap into a new source of funding while building your brand and maximizing your impact in the communities you serve.

Start taking advantage of stock gifting today by registering your nonprofit today.

Wishing you a prosperous 2021!

The DonateStock Team