Thank you, Bill Mulligan, for a response that's right on the mark.  Until I
knew--or thought about--the IRS issue, I used to tell donors that it simply
was against museum policy to provide appraisals.  I would also suggest to
them that it would be unfair for us to provide free appraisals when there are
professional appraisers who perform such services for a fee.  Perhaps that's
a bit beside the point, but the donors usually appreciated that perspective.

Having said that, however, the real problem that I've encountered is with
low-value items, for which the cost of an appraisal might exceed the
deductible value, and the donor, unfamiliar with the market, honestly has no
idea what value to place or how to research it.  Is the object worth $50 or
$100?  (One administrator, when presented with this problem, had a reaction
which was less than helpful: why are we even collecting such cheap things?)
While donors could understand my reluctance to put a value on paper, they
felt that my refusal to even offer a verbal guesstimate was unreasonable, and
I had to do some fancy dancing around it.  At times I resorted to a practice
which raised registrarial eyebrows--simply copying for the donor a catalog
sale price for a similar item, without comment.  I didn't do this very often,
as it usually was difficult to locate a relevant comparison, but do you think
this was a questionable practice?

David Haberstich

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