Naming Rights Online

Monday, June 1, 2015

A recent article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy describes the rising practice of posting once-private naming opportunities online.   Proponents argue that it increases transparency; opponents worry that it transforms a naming gift into a business deal.  For more than four decades the IRS has considered charitable naming rights to have no dollar value, enabling donors to fully deduct gifts and nonprofits to avoid taxes on related income. But when Lincoln Center announced that it would pay $15 million to re-acquire the naming rights for Avery Fisher Hall from the Fisher family so the hall could be renovated, in effect a dollar value to those rights was created. William Drennan of Southern Illinois University School of Law commented, "I think it is completely within [the IRS’s] authority to now say, ‘Naming rights have fair-market value, and you can’t deduct whatever that fair market value is."

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