CURE Blog

By: Mike Stanford, With Homrich Berg, an independent registered investment adviser

If you are considering a donation to CURE, consider making a gift of appreciated stock or mutual fund shares instead of a cash donation.  In addition to the satisfaction of contributing to a cause you believe in, gifting appreciated property may provide meaningful year-end tax savings and other long-term benefits for your financial situation.

Tax Benefits

Charitable contributions of appreciated securities provide income-tax advantages in two ways:  1) through a charitable deduction – generally for the fair market value of the securities at the time of the contribution, subject to certain tax law limits and, 2) through capital gains tax savings – you are not taxed on the capital gain that would result if you sold the property.

For example, let’s say you own shares of stock worth $10,000 and that these shares were bought over a year ago for $7,500.   If you sell the stock, you will have long-term capital gain income of $2,500 which will be taxed.   However, if you donate the stock to charity, you may claim a $10,000 charitable deduction and avoid paying capital gains tax on the $2,500 of appreciation in the stock.  The charity will receive the stock donation and sell it immediately for $10,000, generally with no capital gains tax because of the charity’s tax-exempt status.

In order to receive these benefits a couple of important points:
1)     The stock must be long-term capital gain property, or stock you’ve owned for more than one year or stock you inherited.
2)    If the stock has been held for less than 1 year, your charitable deduction is limited to your cost basis rather than the stock’s fair market value.
3)    It’s important to consider the type of charity to which the gift is made. While a gift of appreciated stock to a public charity generally allows the donor to take a deduction for fair market value, the same gift to a private foundation may result in a charitable deduction that is limited to your cost basis.

Other Considerations

While donating appreciated stock can lead to tax advantages, think twice about giving stock that has lost value since you bought it.  A better idea is to sell stock that has lost value, realize the capital loss for tax purposes and donate the proceeds of the sale to the charity.    If you simply donated the stock, you would receive credit for the charitable deduction but couldn’t deduct the capital loss.

Making the Transfer

Most brokers and mutual fund companies will directly transfer shares to a charity for you. However, they normally require the charity to have a brokerage account in order to receive the shares.  Check with your charity before you initiate the transfer. If the charity doesn’t have an account with an independent advisor or brokerage firm, you should discuss your gift and encourage the charity to open an account to receive it.

If you have an actual stock certificate for the amount you want to donate, you can sign the back of the certificate but make sure you hand deliver it to your charity.   If your stock certificate is for more shares than you want to donate, you can ask your broker (or the charity’s broker) to have the stock certificate reissued in two or more smaller certificates. You can transfer one of these new certificates to the charity.

Probably a better idea in order to protect yourself is to execute a letter of authorization describing the stock and donation amount (your broker or charity can provide a template). Then, send the unsigned stock certificate to the charity by registered mail in one envelope and the letter of authorization in another.

Before you make a gift of stock or mutual funds, especially for a significant gift, talk to your professional financial advisor to determine how such a gift may affect your overall financial plan.

For instructions on making a gift of stock to CURE Childhood Cancer, click here.  For any further information, please contact Shelley Howard at 770.986.0035 ext. 21 or at shelley@curechildhoodcancer.org

Dr. Todd Cooper pauses to look at his pager. He smiles. It’s a call from a patient he’s known for years – she’s now in Mexico and getting ready to go to college. When he first started treating her, she was a little thing – maybe 6 or 7. And the prognosis was not good.

But years later, she’s beaten the odds – and for Cooper, she reminds him why he is so passionate about his job. Studying leukemia is a mission – not just a profession. “It’s nice,” he says, “It’s beautiful.”

Cooper, an Atlanta native, focuses on innovative therapies for pediatric patients who are notoriously difficult to treat. He is also a Renaissance man in a very modern medical world. Cooper, amiable and intellectual, weaves together all the scientific threads needed for a cure: the basic science researchers, clinical doctors, drug companies and the families who just love their children.

Why is that important? Because if everyone is on the same page, cures can reach the children who need them much faster. “It always starts with the kids,” said Cooper, director of the Leukemia/Lymphoma Innovative Therapy program at the Aflac Cancer Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Cooper’s love of this mission started at MD Anderson, where he met his mentor, Dr. Sima Jeha (CQ), nationally known for treating relapsed leukemia. While there, Cooper learned two key lessons: He loved his work and he was able create Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials for pediatric oncology.

Phase I trials enroll small numbers of people (20 or more) who have advanced cancer that cannot be treated effectively with standard treatments or for which no standard treatment exists, according to the National Cancer Institute. Phase II trials are performed on larger groups (20‐300) and are designed to assess how well the drug works, as well as to continue safety assessments in a larger group of volunteers and patients. Phase II trials are often when the drug is discovered not to work as planned, or to have toxic effects.

After a three‐year stint there, the University of Alabama in Birmingham lured him to do a similar effort there. Again, Cooper – master of coordination ‐ was able to start up a Phase 1 testing program. “I think the science of the disease intrigued me,” he said. “There’s still the question of why certain types of leukemia are more difficult to treat – and why they come back.”

That said, Cooper has also seen a lot of advances – most notably, that doctors and researchers are now able to predict with greater accuracy which cases of leukemia are easier to treat and which ones are harder to treat. And they know that the harder cases are “the ones who really help us understand new advances,” he said.

Which leads to his current role in Atlanta…. Scientists know that these difficult types of leukemia often “hide out in bone marrow” – which protects them from the killing effects of chemotherapy. But with CURE’s support and other generous support, the Aflac Cancer Center is now the lead institution studying a particular drug which appears to push those hidden cells into circulation – and that allows them to “be destroyed by chemotherapy.”

Cooper has worked with the drug for three years. With the new funding, the center will work in cooperation with Pediatric Oncology Experimental Therapeutics Investigators Consortium (POETIC) – pulling in teams of researchers, doctors, the drug company and patients. POETIC promotes the early clinical development of promising therapies for the treatment of children, adolescents and young adults with cancer.

“This offers hope to patients and their families that we might be able to potentially help their child,” Cooper said. “And it also places them at the forefront of a battle to help other children as well.”

Bringing such a trial to Atlanta – or to any city ‐ is no small feat. There are numerous challenges to convincing drug companies to permit such trials. After all, it involves children and malignancies, which could be a public relations risk. Financially, it’s also potentially bleak – since scientists are typically trying to treat a very narrow population.

And although there are government incentives to bring drugs to children, it is still difficult to get companies to play. But it’s Cooper’s job “to make sure they do.” And this is just the beginning. Cooper is also hoping to work with a host of other drugs, delicately negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to allow the center to start other needed research.

Cooper, for example, is the principal investigator for the study of a drug which could be useful in treating children who have a specific mutation in their leukemia that leads to devastating outcomes. “Every time we’re successful, we can offer more options of care to our patients.”

Cooper, father of a boy and a girl ‐ a 3 year old and a 10 month old, admits he now empathizes even more with parents than when he was younger. “I get it now,” he said. “I get the pain and the worry that many of our parents face.” But, he adds, “I also get how important this work is.” And with that, he’s off to return a call ‐ to a very special patient in Mexico.

CURE Childhood Cancer is proud to be funding Dr. Cooper’s research.