Planned Giving

Planned giving is designed to benefit the donor while providing support to the synagogue. Consult with your financial advisor regarding bequests, donations of appreciated assets such as real estate, stock, life insurance, charitable remainder trusts, and donor-advised funds.

Donating Stock

CKS accepts donations of publicly traded securities including stocks, bonds and mutual funds. By donating stocks with a capital gain, both the donor and the recipient will benefit more if the stocks are donated instead of selling them and donating the cash. If you are thinking of making a donation to CKS, and you have appreciated long‐term stock holdings (non-retirement and held for > 1 year), instead of selling the stock holdings and having to claim the gain as income on your taxes, you can donate the securities and save on taxes.

Preferred method: Donate Investments using a Donor-Advised Fund

• Set up a donor-advised fund for you and your family, if you don't have one already. You can open a donor-advised fund with many different foundations, including:
  • Schwab Charitable
  • Fidelity Charitable
  • Vanguard Charitable
  • Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Metrowest NJ
  • Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Mercer
  • Jewish Community Foundation of Southern NJ
  • Jewish Communal Fund of NY
• Donate your investment(s) to your own donor-advised fund. This is a tax-deductible donation and you will not have to claim the gain from a sale on your taxes. 
• Direct the donor-advised fund organization to provide a grant to CKS in the amount you'd like to donate. The donor-advised fund will sell the investment(s) to achieve the appropriate amount of the grant, and then will send a check to CKS. Some of these organizations are authorized to deposit funds directly to the CKS bank account instead of sending a check. 
• CKS does not consider this donation as coming from an individual. Rather, this donation is marked as a 3rd-party contribution that was made in your name. Therefore, this donation will not be included in your annual donation letter for your tax return, as the donation did not come from you.
• Donor-advised fund donations may not be used to pay for Religious School tuition, Kehiloft tuition, event tickets, or other types of quid-pro-quo purchases.  

Alternate method: Donate investments directly to CKS

• Complete our Stock Transfer Information Request. CKS will send you the brokerage information that you will need to make the gift.
• Direct your broker to transfer your donated securities using the information provided by CKS.
• CKS will inform you when the gifted stock in the CKS brokerage account is sold (typically occurs within a few days).
• When the transaction is complete, you will receive a donation acknowledgment letter to let you know that the sale has been completed. This letter will reflect the receipt of the actual gift of stock by name and indicate the number of shares gifted. The sale price of the security may be different than the value of the deduction claimed on your taxes.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What determines the value of the securities I donate? This determination is the responsibility of the donor. CKS does not determine the value of the donation, but rather, your broker should provide this information. Assuming there is an active market for the contributed stock, and that the stock traded on the day of the gift, the deductible amount on your taxes is the fair market value on the date of the transfer, not the day that CKS sells the asset. This is defined in IRS Publication 561 as the midpoint between the highest and lowest trading price that day.