The Gift Acceptance Policy: How to Write It With AI, Where to Publish It, and How to Make It Work
Table of Contents
Why Every Nonprofit Needs a Gift Acceptance Policy — and Where That Requirement Came From (Section 1 of 9)
What Other Fundraising Experts Say About Gift Acceptance Policies — and the Gap None of Them Address (Section 2 of 9)
The Eight Elements of a Complete Nonprofit Gift Acceptance Policy — and How AI Can Draft Yours in Minutes (Section 3 of 9)—see page six for the AI prompt.
Cryptocurrency, Real Estate, and DAF Gifts: What Your Gift Acceptance Policy Probably Gets Wrong (Section 4 of 9)
Where to Publish Your Gift Acceptance Policy — and Why It Affects Your IRS Form 990 and Donor Trust (Section 5 of 9)
How to Train Your Development Team on the Gift Acceptance Policy They Have Never Read (Section 6 of 9)
How to Use Your Gift Acceptance Policy in Donor Conversations to Protect and Deepen the Relationship (Section 7 of 9)
How Often to Review Your Gift Acceptance Policy — and What Triggers an Immediate Update (Section 8 of 9)
Five Action Steps to Take This Week (Section 9 of 9)
Executive Summary
Most nonprofits have a gift acceptance policy. Almost none of their development staff have been walked through what it actually says. Almost none of their boards can describe what it covers. And almost none of their development directors know how to invoke it gracefully in a donor conversation — how to use it when a complex gift is on the table, how to decline a gift it was designed to refuse, or how to deploy it as a signal of organizational sophistication rather than a bureaucratic obstacle.
The drafting problem — the original reason gift acceptance policies were difficult — has been solved. AI can produce a serviceable, board-ready draft in under two minutes (see page six for the AI prompt), and a handful of excellent free templates exist for organizations that prefer a human-written starting point. What AI cannot do is implement the policy, teach it to the development team, publish it where it belongs, or use it in the conversations where it matters most. Those are the three problems this white paper addresses.
This paper is organized around that argument: write the policy with AI, publish it in three specific places, teach it annually to every person who might encounter a gift, and use it in donor conversations as the professional credential it actually is.
Section 1 of 9 — Why Every Nonprofit Needs a Gift Acceptance Policy — and Where That Requirement Came From
The gift acceptance policy is now a standard governance expectation for nonprofit organizations in the United States, but it was not always so, and understanding how it became one explains why so many organizations have a policy that was never truly integrated into their development practice.
The origin story has three chapters.
Chapter One: The Tax Reform Act of 1969. The first significant federal pressure on nonprofit gift-taking practice arrived with the Tax Reform Act of 1969, which created private foundation rules and dramatically tightened the relationship between the IRS and the nonprofit sector. Organizations began to understand that accepting certain gifts — particularly gifts with donor-imposed restrictions, gifts of appreciated property, and gifts tied to private benefit arrangements — carried legal and tax consequences they were not equipped to manage without written guidance. The earliest gift acceptance policies emerged from this environment, written primarily by attorneys advising large universities and hospitals receiving gifts of increasing complexity.
Chapter Two: The Tax Reform Act of 1986. The more direct precursor to sector-wide gift acceptance policy adoption was the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which dramatically tightened the rules around charitable deductions for non-cash gifts — eliminating the deduction for the appreciated value of certain donated property, requiring qualified appraisals for gifts of property valued over $5,000, and creating Form 8283 for noncash charitable contributions. For the first time, organizations and their donors faced specific documentation requirements and liability questions that made an informal "we accept whatever arrives" approach genuinely dangerous, and this is when attorneys and gift planning professionals began advising organizations of all sizes — not just universities and hospitals, but community nonprofits, social service agencies, and faith-based organizations — to adopt written policies.
Chapter Three: The 2008 Form 990 Redesign. The IRS redesigned Form 990 in 2008 — the most significant overhaul since the form's creation — and added Schedule M, which explicitly asks whether the organization has "a gift acceptance policy that requires the review of any non-standard contributions." That question turned the policy's existence into a public governance disclosure, visible to any donor, foundation, watchdog organization, or journalist who looks up the organization on Candid or ProPublica, and a "no" answer on Schedule M, line 31, is now a public governance red flag.
This is the punch line of the origin story: the 2008 Form 990 redesign created a wave of gift acceptance policy adoptions driven primarily by the desire to answer "yes" on Schedule M. The policy was drafted. The board approved it. It was filed in the minutes. And then — in most organizations — nothing further happened, because the problem the policy was adopted to solve was replaced by the simpler problem of having a policy at all. The implementation gap that resulted is what this paper addresses, beginning with an honest look at what the existing literature has and has not provided.
Section 2 of 9 — What Other Fundraising Experts Say About Gift Acceptance Policies — and the Gap None of Them Address
Before describing what this white paper offers, it is worth naming what already exists — because the existing resources are genuinely good, and understanding where they stop explains where this paper begins.
The technical gold standard: Jonathan Tidd. The most rigorous treatment of gift acceptance policy content in the fundraising literature comes from Jonathan Tidd, an attorney whose practice is limited to advising charitable organizations on gift planning issues. Tidd published his framework for the elements of a complete gift acceptance policy in Trusts and Estates magazine and presented it at the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners conference. His eight-element framework — described in the Stelter Insights blog (blog.stelter.com) — is the field's most authoritative guide to what a complete policy must contain. It is written for attorneys and sophisticated gift planning professionals. It is excellent at what it does, and it does not address implementation, publication, staff training, or donor conversation use — because those are not legal questions but management questions, and they belong in a practitioner's guide.
The practical starting point: Claire Axelrad and the template providers. Claire Axelrad, J.D., CFRE — AFP Outstanding Fundraising Professional of the Year and Chief Fundraising Coach for Bloomerang — has written the most accessible and practically useful treatment of gift acceptance policies for working development directors. Her Bloomerang post on how to create gift acceptance policies, and Bloomerang's accompanying template, are the field's best free starting resources for organizations drafting a policy for the first time. The Jitasa Group template, the Double the Donation guide, and the National Council of Nonprofits overview (councilofnonprofits.org) round out this category. All of them are focused on producing the document, and none of them address what happens after the board votes to adopt it.
The democratizing development: AI. In 2026, the drafting problem that justified both of the above categories has been substantially solved. A development director who prompts an AI tool with a well-structured request can produce a board-ready first draft in under two minutes — far faster than adapting a template — and Section 3 of this paper includes a specific, working AI prompt for exactly this purpose. There is no apology needed for using AI to draft a gift acceptance policy. It is the right tool for the drafting job, which frees the practitioner to focus on the implementation jobs that AI cannot do.
The gap in the existing literature is not in drafting guidance. It is in everything that happens after the draft is approved — the questions of what a complete policy must contain, which new gift types require immediate attention, where the policy belongs publicly, who needs to be trained on it, and how to use it in the conversations that matter most. This paper closes that gap, beginning with the diagnostic framework every development director should apply to their current policy before doing anything else.
Section 3 of 9 — The Eight Elements of a Complete Nonprofit Gift Acceptance Policy — and How AI Can Draft Yours in Minutes
Before turning to implementation, a complete policy must exist — and if yours does not, or if the one in your board minutes was adopted a decade ago and never reviewed since, now is the moment to produce a current version. The diagnostic framework below, drawn from Tidd's eight-element structure, allows any development director to evaluate whether their current policy covers what it needs to cover — and the AI prompt at the end of this section produces a board-ready draft that covers all eight elements in minutes.
Element 1: Authority to Accept. The policy must specify who has authority to accept gifts on the organization's behalf — typically the executive director or chief development officer for standard gifts, with board approval required for complex or high-value gifts above a defined threshold. The policy should also specify who may delegate that authority and to whom.
Element 2: Accepted and Declined Gift Types. The policy must list which gift types the organization will accept — cash, checks, credit cards, publicly traded stock, real estate, personal property, life insurance, retirement plan designations, bequests, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, and cryptocurrency, among others — and which it will decline. The list of declined gifts is as important as the list of accepted ones, and it should be specific enough to provide real guidance when an unusual gift arrives.
Element 3: Valuation Methodology. The policy must specify how non-cash gifts will be valued for acknowledgment purposes. IRS rules require qualified appraisals for gifts of property valued over $5,000, and the policy should reflect these requirements while clarifying the organization's own procedures for different gift types.
Element 4: Complex Gift Review Process. The policy must describe the process for reviewing gifts that fall outside the routine — who is involved, what due diligence is required, what timeline governs the decision, and what happens if the review reveals problems with the gift. Real estate, closely held business interests, and cryptocurrency are the gift types most likely to require this process.
Element 5: Gift Agreement Requirements. The policy must specify when a formal gift agreement is required — typically for any named or endowed fund, any gift with donor-imposed restrictions, any pledge above a defined threshold, and any complex gift involving trust arrangements. Gift agreements should be drafted by legal counsel and reviewed before execution.
Element 6: Restricted Gift Management. The policy must address how restricted gifts will be managed — how restrictions are documented, how compliance is tracked, what happens when a restriction becomes impractical or impossible to honor, and how the organization communicates with donors about the use of their restricted gifts. This element is frequently under addressed, and failure to honor documented restrictions is among the most damaging things that can happen to a donor relationship.
Element 7: Donor Communication Standards. The policy must specify how the organization will communicate with donors about gift acceptance decisions — how it will acknowledge gifts, how it will decline gifts that do not meet policy requirements, and how it will handle the conversation when a donor's proposed gift requires modification or supplemental due diligence. This element should also address two compliance dimensions that most policies overlook: the quid pro quo disclosure requirement, which applies when a donor receives goods or services of value in exchange for a contribution and requires the organization to provide a written disclosure of the non-deductible portion; and the conflict of interest protocol, which specifies how the organization handles gift proposals in which a board member or staff member has a personal financial interest — for example, a board member proposing to donate a property they want to sell at a favorable valuation, or a gift from a family foundation with conditions that benefit the proposing party. Both situations are more common than most organizations anticipate, and the policy is the instrument that de-personalizes the response.
Element 8: Review and Update Protocol. The policy must specify how often it will be reviewed, who is responsible for the review, what triggers an immediate review outside the regular cycle, and how revisions are approved. Section 8 of this paper addresses this element in full.
When to Escalate to Legal Counsel
Not every gift acceptance question requires a call to the attorney, and not every unusual situation can be resolved internally. The general rule: standard gifts processed according to clear policy provisions do not require legal review. Complex gifts — real estate, closely held business interests, gifts with unusual restrictions, gifts involving trust arrangements, and cryptocurrency above a defined threshold — should trigger at least a brief legal consultation before acceptance is confirmed. When a board member or staff member has a personal interest in the outcome of a gift decision, legal counsel should be involved regardless of the gift type. And when a gift arrives that the policy does not clearly address, the appropriate sequence is to acknowledge the donor's generosity, explain that the organization needs a brief period to confirm its acceptance procedures, and consult with counsel before proceeding — not to accept the gift first and seek guidance afterward.
With the policy complete and its eight elements confirmed, the three gift types most likely to expose gaps in an existing policy deserve specific attention before the implementation work begins.
Section 4 of 9 — Cryptocurrency, Real Estate, and DAF Gifts: What Your Gift Acceptance Policy Probably Gets Wrong
If your organization does not yet have a gift acceptance policy — or if the existing policy is out of date — the following prompt will produce a board-ready first draft in any major AI tool. Copy it, fill in the bracketed information, and paste it directly:
AI Prompt to use:
"Draft a gift acceptance policy for a [type of organization — e.g., community health nonprofit, after-school program, faith-based social services agency] with an annual budget of approximately [amount]. The organization wants to accept the following gift types: [list — e.g., cash, checks, publicly traded stock, real estate, cryptocurrency, retirement plan beneficiary designations, bequests, life insurance]. The policy should include: who has authority to accept gifts; the review process for complex or high-value gifts; valuation methodology for non-cash gifts; gift agreement requirements; restricted gift management procedures; how the organization will communicate with donors about gift decisions; and an annual review requirement. Write it in plain language suitable for board adoption, and note where legal counsel review is recommended."
The draft the AI produces will not be a finished legal document — it will require review by qualified legal counsel before the board adopts it, and it should be customized to reflect the organization's specific situation. But it will be a substantive, comprehensive starting point in minutes rather than days, and it will cover all eight elements that Tidd's framework identifies as essential. The next section addresses the three gift type gaps most likely to exist in any policy that has not been updated in the past three years.
Section 4 of 9 — Cryptocurrency, Real Estate, and DAF Gifts: What Your Gift Acceptance Policy Probably Gets Wrong
Even organizations with a well-drafted gift acceptance policy are likely to have gaps in three specific areas, each of which has become significantly more consequential in the past three years.
Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets
In 2024, US nonprofits received more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency donations, with the average crypto gift reaching $10,978 — a 386 percent increase from 2023 — and more than 70 percent of the top 100 US charities now accept crypto donations. Yet most small and mid-size nonprofit gift acceptance policies say nothing about digital assets, leaving development teams without guidance when a crypto gift arrives and exposing the organization to accounting compliance gaps that are no longer theoretical.
In June 2023, the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued ASU 2023-08, Intangibles — Goodwill and Other — Crypto Assets, which introduced a fair-value measurement model and expanded disclosures for crypto assets, now fully effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2024. Organizations receiving cryptocurrency donations must measure those assets at fair value with changes recognized in net income — a requirement that makes having a clear acceptance and liquidation policy not a best practice but an accounting necessity.
The IRS treats cryptocurrency as property rather than currency, which means the same principles that govern stock donations apply: the donor receives a deduction for the fair market value at the date of gift, capital gains taxes are avoided on the appreciation, and the organization must file Form 8282 if it sells the donated property within three years. These rules are well-established, but the policy must say so explicitly and must specify whether the organization will hold cryptocurrency or liquidate it immediately — a decision that carries both financial and reputational dimensions.
Real Estate
Real estate remains the gift type most likely to create serious problems for organizations without a clear acceptance policy. The policy must specify the environmental assessment, title search, and property inspection requirements that precede acceptance; the threshold above which board approval is required; the timeline within which the organization will liquidate donated real estate; and how carrying costs during the liquidation period will be managed. An organization that accepts a real estate gift without these procedures in place is an organization that has accepted an unknown liability — and the story of a nonprofit that accepted a house only to discover it was built on a snake den and required thousands of dollars in remediation is not apocryphal. It is the predictable consequence of accepting real estate without due diligence.
DAF-Linked Estate Gifts
The third gap is the newest and the least discussed. Wealthy donors are increasingly naming donor-advised fund sponsors as beneficiaries of their estates rather than making direct charitable bequests — creating succession plans for their DAF accounts and instructing successor advisors to continue recommending grants to favored organizations after their death. This creates a category of gift that sits at the intersection of DAF policy and gift acceptance policy, and most gift acceptance policies are entirely silent on it.
For organizations with established DAF donor relationships, the practical question is: when a DAF-sponsored grant arrives from a successor advisor representing a deceased donor, does the organization know how to honor the donor's original intent? This requires CRM documentation of the donor's giving history and known wishes, a stewardship protocol for successor advisor relationships, and policy language that addresses how DAF-originated gifts — including posthumous grants — will be acknowledged and credited. The Great Wealth Transfer makes this gap increasingly consequential with each passing year, and it belongs in every gift acceptance policy updated after 2024. With the policy complete and its gaps addressed, the next question — where the policy lives and who can see it — determines whether it functions as a governance credential or remains invisible to the donors it is designed to serve.
Section 5 of 9 — Where to Publish Your Gift Acceptance Policy — and Why It Affects Your IRS Form 990 and Donor Trust
Once the policy exists and is board-approved, where it lives is not an administrative question. It is a strategic one — and most organizations treat the policy as an internal document when it should be a public one. The policy belongs in three specific places, each serving a distinct purpose.
First: The Organization's Website
The National Council of Nonprofits recommends posting the gift acceptance policy on the organization's website for maximum financial transparency, and the reasons extend well beyond transparency for its own sake. A publicly posted gift acceptance policy signals to prospective donors — particularly those considering complex gifts — that the organization is professionally managed, has thought carefully about how it receives philanthropy, and can be trusted to handle a significant gift with appropriate care.
In practical terms, a development director who can say "our gift acceptance policy is on our website — here is the link" in a conversation with a donor considering a gift of appreciated stock or a real estate contribution is demonstrating organizational sophistication that most peer organizations cannot match. The policy becomes a cultivation tool, reducing friction in complex gift conversations by giving donors and their advisors the information they need to structure a gift correctly before approaching the organization.
Second: IRS Form 990 Schedule M
Organizations receiving more than $25,000 in noncash contributions must complete Form 990 Schedule M, Noncash Contributions, which asks on line 31 whether the organization has "a gift acceptance policy that requires the review of any non-standard contributions." This question is answered on a publicly available document visible to any donor, foundation program officer, watchdog organization, or journalist who looks up the organization on Candid or ProPublica — and a "no" answer is a public governance red flag, while a "yes" answer accompanied by a publicly posted policy is a governance credential. The policy's public visibility is not optional; it is already required by the 990, and organizations that have adopted a policy but not posted it publicly are leaving a significant transparency signal unclaimed.
Third: The Development Office
The third home for the policy — and the one most consistently overlooked — is the development office itself, in the hands of every person who might encounter a gift. This is not a filing cabinet copy or a shared drive document that requires three clicks to find but a printed one-page summary, pinned to the development team bulletin board and reviewed at staff orientation, that answers the questions a team member is most likely to face: What gifts do we accept? Who has authority to say yes? What do I do when I receive something unusual? How do I decline a gift gracefully? That one-page summary is the practical instrument through which the policy becomes organizational knowledge rather than governance paperwork — and producing it is the first step in the training process that Section 6 addresses directly.
Section 6 of 9 — How to Train Your Development Team on the Gift Acceptance Policy They Have Never Read
The most consequential failure in gift acceptance policy implementation is not the absence of a policy but the presence of a policy that no one on the development team has been walked through since the day it was adopted. A policy that exists in the board minutes but not in the working knowledge of the development team cannot protect the organization in the moment it is needed most — which is precisely the moment an unusual gift arrives and a team member must respond in real time.
Annual Staff Orientation
Every development team member — full-time, part-time, and volunteer — should receive a formal orientation to the gift acceptance policy when they join the organization and a brief annual review each year thereafter. The orientation does not need to be long: thirty minutes, conducted by the development director, covering the policy's key provisions, the most common gift types the organization receives, the procedure for handling unusual gifts, and the escalation path when a gift falls outside the policy, is sufficient. The goal is not memorization but familiarity — the confidence to know what the policy says and where to find it when a situation arises.
The One-Page Summary
The full gift acceptance policy is a governance document, not a working reference tool for a development associate who has just received a phone call from a donor offering a piece of vacation property. The development director should produce a one-page summary of the policy — the ten most common situations it addresses, the threshold above which board approval is required, the contact information for legal counsel, and the procedure for declining a gift — that every team member can access immediately. This summary should be updated whenever the policy is revised and distributed to every team member at the annual review.
Board Member Briefing
Board members who approved the gift acceptance policy should be able to describe its key provisions when asked by a prospective donor — and most cannot, because the board vote that adopted the policy was not accompanied by a substantive discussion of what it says. A fifteen-minute presentation at a board meeting, covering the policy's purpose, its most significant provisions, the gift types it addresses, and the situations in which a board member might be approached directly by a donor with a complex gift, gives board members the working knowledge they need to be effective stewards of the policy in community settings.
Connecting the Policy to Major Gifts and Legacy Giving
The gift acceptance policy is most consequential in the major gifts and legacy giving conversations that the companion white papers in this series address. A board member or volunteer serving on the major gifts volunteer team or the legacy gift committee is the person most likely to be approached by a community member considering a gift of real estate, appreciated stock, or a retirement plan designation — and they are the person least likely to have been briefed on the gift acceptance policy. Building a brief policy review into the orientation for every major gifts volunteer and every legacy gift committee member is the practical step that connects governance to frontline fundraising — and frontline fundraising is precisely where the policy's next function lives.
Section 7 of 9 — How to Use Your Gift Acceptance Policy in Donor Conversations to Protect and Deepen the Relationship
The gift acceptance policy is almost universally treated as a protective instrument — a document that tells the organization what it can refuse. That framing is accurate but incomplete, because the policy is equally effective as a relationship-building instrument when deployed with skill in the right conversations. Here are the four scenarios where it matters most.
Scenario 1: A Prospective Donor Is Considering a Complex Gift
When a major donor raises the possibility of a gift of real estate, appreciated securities, a retirement plan designation, or cryptocurrency, the development director's natural instinct is to say yes immediately and figure out the details later. The more professional response is: "We do have a gift acceptance policy that covers gifts of this type — let me share it with you and your advisor so we can make sure this is structured in a way that works for everyone." That response signals organizational sophistication, brings the donor's financial advisor into the conversation in a way that protects both parties, and creates a natural follow-up touchpoint that advances the cultivation relationship.
Scenario 2: A Gift Arrives That the Policy Was Designed to Decline
When an unusual gift arrives — a car in poor condition, a piece of property with environmental issues, a bequest with restrictions the organization cannot honor — the team member who receives it must be able to respond quickly, graciously, and without creating a donor relations crisis. The policy de-personalizes the decision: "Our gift acceptance policy requires us to conduct a review before accepting gifts of this kind — may I have a few days to consult with our leadership and come back to you?" is a response that honors the donor's generosity while protecting the organization's interests, and it is infinitely more effective than an ad hoc refusal that implies the gift was unwelcome.
Scenario 3: A Donor Proposes Conditions the Organization Cannot Honor
Restricted gifts — gifts designated for purposes, named funds, or programs the organization has discontinued or modified — create situations where the donor's intent and the organization's operational reality are in conflict. The policy's restricted gift management provisions provide the framework: what restrictions the organization will and will not accept, how it communicates with donors when a restriction becomes impractical, and how it protects the donor relationship while maintaining programmatic integrity. A development director who can reference the policy in this conversation has an answer rather than an apology.
Scenario 4: The Policy as a Signal of Organizational Sophistication
In major gift and legacy giving cultivation conversations, the gift acceptance policy is an unexpected signal of organizational maturity. Most donors who make significant gifts to small and mid-size nonprofits have also made significant gifts to universities, hospitals, and other large institutions whose gift acceptance procedures are formal and well-documented. When a community nonprofit can say "we have a gift acceptance policy on our website that our board reviews annually and that covers the full range of gift vehicles our donors use — including cryptocurrency and retirement plan designations" — that organization is communicating something about its governance culture that most peers cannot match. The policy is not just protection — it is positioning, and keeping it current is what makes that positioning credible year after year.
Section 8 of 9 — How Often to Review Your Gift Acceptance Policy — and What Triggers an Immediate Update
A gift acceptance policy that is never reviewed is potentially more dangerous than no policy at all — because a policy the organization fails to follow consistently may create more liability than the absence of a written policy. Consistent, documented review is not optional. It is the mechanism that keeps the policy current, relevant, and defensible.
The Annual Review
The development committee of the board is the appropriate body to conduct the annual gift acceptance policy review, ideally in the first quarter of the year before the major spring and fall giving seasons. The review should cover: whether the gift types listed reflect the full range of gifts the organization currently receives; whether the valuation methodology reflects current IRS requirements; whether the complex gift review process has been followed consistently; whether the restricted gift provisions have been honored; and whether any new gift types — particularly cryptocurrency and DAF-linked estate gifts — require policy additions. The review should be documented in board minutes, and the policy should be dated with the most recent revision date — a detail that signals to donors and program officers reviewing the policy on the website that the organization takes its governance responsibilities seriously.
What Triggers an Immediate Review
Four situations should trigger an immediate policy review outside the annual cycle, and each should be treated as an organizational priority rather than a scheduling convenience.
A new gift type arrives that the policy does not address. Cryptocurrency is the current example for most small nonprofits — if a donor offers a Bitcoin gift and the policy says nothing about digital assets, or the policy needs an immediate addition before the gift can be properly processed.
A significant regulatory change affects gift acceptance or valuation. The FASB ASU 2023-08 fair-value accounting standard for crypto assets, now fully effective, is the current example, and IRS guidance changes affecting non-cash gift deductions, appraisal requirements, or documentation standards similarly require prompt policy review.
The organization's mission, program structure, or financial capacity changes significantly. A nonprofit that has expanded its geographic reach, added a major new program, or experienced a significant change in financial capacity may need to revise which gift types it accepts and what review procedures apply.
A gift is received that reveals a gap in the policy. When the policy fails to provide clear guidance in a real situation — when a development team member does not know what the policy says about a specific gift type — that failure is a signal that the policy needs revision before the next gift of that type arrives. With the review discipline established, the action steps that follow convert the entire framework into an immediate organizational priority.
Section 9 of 9 — Five Action Steps to Take This Week
1. Pull your current gift acceptance policy and assess it against the eight elements. Find the most recent version — board minutes, shared drive, or website — and read it against the eight elements in Section 3. Note which elements are addressed adequately, which are addressed inadequately, and which are absent entirely. That assessment is the starting point for the revision.
2. If you do not have a current policy, use the AI prompt in Section 3 to produce a first draft today. Copy the prompt, fill in your organization's specifics, and paste it into your preferred AI tool. Review the draft against the eight elements, make additions or modifications specific to your situation, and send it to your attorney for review before board presentation. The goal is to make a board-ready draft within the week.
3. Add cryptocurrency, DAF-linked estate gifts, and real estate due diligence to your policy review agenda. Even if your current policy is otherwise complete, these three gift types are the most likely to be inadequately addressed in any policy written before 2022, and Section 4 provides the specific considerations for each.
4. Post the policy on your organization's website this week. If it is not already there, that is the single most impactful implementation step available. Confirm that the URL is stable, add it to your website's navigation or footer, and send the link to your development team so they can reference it in donor conversations.
5. Schedule the annual policy review on the development committee calendar. If the policy has not been reviewed in the past twelve months, add it to the next development committee agenda, document the review in board minutes, and update the policy's revision date. A gift acceptance policy dated five years ago tells every sophisticated donor who reads it that the organization's governance practices have not kept pace with the sector.
A gift acceptance policy that lives only in the board minutes is not a gift acceptance policy. It is a liability waiting to fail in the moment an unusual gift arrives and no one on the development team knows what to do. The organizations that get the most from this governance instrument are the ones that treat it as a living document: written with the best available tools, published where it belongs, taught to every person who might encounter a gift, and used in donor conversations as the professional credential it actually is.
A Note on Use
This white paper is offered freely for educational purposes. Please share it with executive directors, development directors, board members, and development committee members who may find it useful — provided the author's byline remains intact: By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA. Reproduction in publications, training programs, or institutional materials requires attribution. To request permission or discuss reprint rights, please reach out through the contact page.
What has your experience been with gift acceptance policies — has yours ever protected you from a gift you should not have taken, or failed you when you needed it most? Share your experience in the comments section of the website.
