Charitable Donations Of Stamp Collections

Posted elsewhere by someone else:




The American Stamp & Coin Foundation is an appraiser, incorporated as a non-profit, who also accepts donations to be passed along; I'd look for more of a 'pure play', myself, but that's me.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Bill, your points about taxation of donations sound like you have direct experience with this subject. My guess is that the majority of collections being liquidated could potentially offer the owner a worthwhile tax deduction. From what I see, 80% to 90% of collections sold online fall into a modest range with CVs of $1500 to $15,000. ebay auctions rarely generate sales greater than 15% with many selling for less.

Ikey,
Thanks for the additional info. I see from American Stamp & Coin Foundation's website that they provide paid appraisal services.

I have no interest in donating my collection to an organization that says they support kid's stamp education, but lists no formal annual report that verifies how they use contribution proceeds.

Perhaps stamp community could use a true not-for-profit that provides tax deductions while funneling all proceeds to socially responsible charitable organizations. Stamps are a great hobby and pastime, but they could make the world a better place if their value were channeled outside the stamp community.

Wow Dan are you still interested in you Stamps store project ?

Before Xmas you were talking a lot about an Educational kid's project …

Now you want to start a non-profit association, I happen to have a lot of experience servicing computers in many of them here in Canada. They all work on the same schematic

A director have a huge salary with expenses and a bunch of volunteers to make the hard work, it's normal and completely legit to give a salary to someone hire and working full time

If you are the director Dan, will not be a conflict of interest if you also own a retail outfit? This Stamp kid's educational project; are you interested to be also the director?

If I want to give stamps I will give them to members of the locals club who seem to have a very limited budget, directly to the school to start a lunch time stamps club. Everything except feed the pocket of a Director of non-profit association.

I've noted on other threads; and will repeat here; that I live in the same metro area as the Rocky Mountain Philatelic Library. I've donated surplus material to the Library for each of the past several years. I value the material at maybe 20% of catalog and it's mostly common stuff (I won't go as far as floortrader to call it "hamster bedding"). I've pulled out some better singles and either sold those through the APS Store or given to the APS for another tax write-off when the items did not sell within a year. Yes, the material valued at 25 cents each adds up quickly.But I still keep my write-offs low.

What does RMPL do with donated material, even common stuff? A lot of it goes into their kids' program. More gets bundled into lots for their two annual large lots auctions. You can find out more at http://rmpldenver.org . Proceeds from these auctions benefit the Library. If any of you live in an area where there is a philatelic library, check them out for being the recipient of your philatelic donations.

I do NOT recommend giving philatelic material to a social services, educational, or similar charity unless you are sure that the charity has someone on their development staff who knows collectibles, especially stamps.

I do similarly with the Northwest Philatelic Library, Unique Stamps for Kids, and the Oregon Stamp Society Foundation here in Oregon, with NPL getting reference material, Unique getting kiloware and OSSF getting salable material. Cash I donate to Portland Philatelic Exhibitions to help them defray costs of putting on PIPEX each year. They each have different charters and perform different services to the philatelic community, and they each are 501(c)(3) corporations. I also do not recommend to anyone donations of our type of material to charities that aren't setup for it. They typically broker it out to dealers or auction houses and get very small returns.

From what I understand, the $5000 figure mentioned earlier is valid for your overall deductions, but there is also a $500 line item figure where you have to provide additional detail. It's by fast best to not try and use full CV for evaluations, the IRS is well aware of actual values and if you try something that'll red flag them, they'll be sure to look very carefully at your figures. Much more reasonable is 20% or 30% for nice collections and 1¢ per stamp for the fodder.

area66,let me set the record straight...

You may choose to give your stamps to local kid's clubs, or a church, or whatever you'd like. I happen to believe that many collectors would rather see their stamp collections benefit people who are hungry, sick, or destitute.

Since I joined this forum I have shared several of my ideas about ways I might use my time now that I'm retired from corporate marketing. I have no interest in my involvement as a paid director of anything. I don't want to focus on how to make money. My goal is to do something worthwhile. So, no, I have no interest to become a stamp dealer or run my own stamp store. Unless I could help a charity put stamps to use helping those in need.

As I explained in this thread, I think there is an opportunity for a non-profit to turn stamp collections into funding for worthwhile charities that help people. My reason is simple. There are organizations such as "Collectibles With Causes" and "American Stamp & Coin Foundation" that ask online for donations of stamp collections. But neither organization offers a audited annual report that indicates how the revenue is used.

So while I agree with you that there are many organizations that take donations and payout too much of it for staff salaries and perks, I also recognize the brilliant humanitarian work being done by Doctors Without Borders, CARE, and many other well run charities. And I think stamp collecting is fine, but improving lives is better!

ClimberSteve,
Your point is a great one. I have some ideas how the mechanics might work, but obviously there needs to be a structure in place to manage the following functions:

1) A legitimate 501(c)(3) organization that can intake stamp collections and dispense proper IRS Tax Deduction receipts for goods
and handle any tax-related reporting

2) Experienced, knowledgeable stamp appraisal, marketing and sales to maximize revenue generation from donated collections

3) Efficient revenue disbursement from stamp sales to a list of recognized charities that are well-managed and provide transparency regarding use of funds and low operating costs

Like this?




http://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/dona...ps-and-coins ... from Oxfam UK on Donating Stamps

In my experience of Oxfam's "rare" book and record offerings, "carelessly overpriced" might be a better description.

I'm glad this post was continued as I may have some items to donate myself. I'll look through the various options and see what makes sense. Thanks to all.

I have consolidated various proposals for donations that have appeared here in the past few years.

Anyone who sends an eMail can have the current version of the PDF.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

ikeyPikey, thanks very much for sharing Oxfam website. The way that organization handles stamp donations in order to help fund charitable work is very much what I envision. I'm not surprised to find this form of social funding is already utilizing stamp collections. But I hadn't heard of Oxfam previously.

I'd like to see a similar effort geared for US taxpayers.

see link below for arie foundation

www.ariefoundation.com

They have been donating stamps and cards to hospitalized vets and children hospital for many years

I was pleased to see billsey's post mentioning the Northwest Philatelic Library in Portland, OR. I was a long-time board member and continue as the library's webmaster (www.nwpl.org). I can report that the donations we continue to receive are much like those described in the post regarding the Rocky Mountain Philatelic Library and are managed in much the same way.

One thing I haven't seen discussed here are donations of mint postage. This has been a frequent donation to the NWPL. While common mint U.S. is only bringing 60 percent of face (or less) when sold to dealers, I would think this could be legitimately claimed at full face value when donated to a tax-deductible non-profit. And that could be any non-profit, not just philatelic related.