A Collector’s Guide to Non-Cash Museum Donations

In the past year, the Toledo Museum of Art received several dozen works on paper by the Pop artist Marisol, a series of black-and-white photographs by Brett Weston, two sculptures by Roxy Paine, a painting by Richard Diebenkorn, four sculptural works by Martin Puryear and a linoleum-cut print by Kara Walker, among other artworks. Most donations to the museum, of course, came in the form of cash—such as the gift from one local family that funded free parking for visitors for 10 years—but not all. Other gifts included shares in startup businesses (a pharmaceutical and a tech company among them), an estate and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Solana, and others.

“There is a lot of flexibility in the kinds of donations we will accept,” Adam Levine, the museum’s director, told Observer. The museum’s board determines the types of gifts the institution will accept, and it becomes the development department’s job to figure out what to do with donations that aren’t artworks or cash. “We don’t have people on staff with expertise in real estate and crypto and startup companies,” he said, adding that the museum can “accept a variety of things, generally liquidating them immediately.”

The estate, for instance, was turned over to realtors who sold the house and property for $800,000, while the crypto was deposited in an account at The Giving Block, a Pennsylvania-based platform that helps nonprofits convert cryptocurrency donations into usable cash. The Toledo Museum of Art began accepting crypto in 2023, with donations amounting to more than $100,000 in 2025, “and that amount has been growing every year,” Levine said.

A growing percentage of gifts to museums arrive in the form of “real estate, pension plans, life insurance payouts, boats, cars, crypto—you name it,” said Ken Cerini, managing partner of Cerini & Associates, which helps not-for-profit groups value and make use of non-cash donations. “I tell people who want to donate crypto to a nonprofit to reach out to the organization to see if they will take it. Most organizations will find a way to make it happen, particularly if it will be a sizeable donation.”

Among high-profile museums that accept non-cash donations are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which accepts cryptocurrency; the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which accepts appreciated securities; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which accepts real estate. All three, along with others such as the Guggenheim, accept donations of stock.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, according to a spokesperson, accepts stock (“several times each month”) and real estate (“that’s a bit more rare”), as well as wine donations from winemakers for its annual wine auction. “But at this time we don’t accept Bitcoin,” the spokesperson added. As one might expect, the online-only Museum of Crypto Art does.

Receiving a crypto or other non-cash donation requires more than simply deciding to accept it. The Giving Block, a crypto fundraising platform, works with close to 30 museums and cultural institutions across the U.S., including the Smithsonian Institution and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Over $1.2 million in crypto was donated to museums and cultural institutions in 2025—a nearly 50 percent increase from 2024. “When a crypto donation is received, we instantly convert the crypto to U.S. dollars to capture the full donation value and then send the U.S. dollars directly to the organization’s bank account,” a spokesperson told Observer. Unsurprisingly, crypto donors tend to “skew younger than traditional major donors”—millennials and younger Gen X—“but they also tend to be meaningfully wealthier than the average online donor.”

Making non-cash gifts offers tax benefits to donors, Cerini said, noting that “with the uptick in the stock market and cryptocurrencies realizing significant gains, there is real value in the donation of these assets, as donors get the benefit of a charitable contribution for the fair market value of the asset” without having to sell it and incur capital gains tax.

Chris Haydon, founder of Crypto Appraisal Pro, which provides IRS-compliant appraisals for cryptocurrency donations, stated that more than 70 percent of the top charities in the U.S., as ranked by Forbes, accept cryptocurrency donations. “That’s up from just 12 percent in 2020.” Donations of crypto have more than tripled in the past year, driven by the fact that cryptocurrencies have “created enormous wealth. Bitcoin alone has gone from under $1,000 in 2017 to over $90,000 today. Early holders are sitting on massive unrealized gains.” He added that “five years ago, accepting crypto was a novelty. Today, for major charities, universities and hospitals, it’s becoming standard practice.”

As with any other non-cash charitable donation—such as artwork or an antique—donors may receive a tax deduction (usually 30 percent of the item’s fair market value) if the asset has been held for more than one year, with the value assessed at the time of the gift. According to IRS rules, if the charitable contribution deduction claimed exceeds $5,000, a qualified appraisal is required.

Finding an appraiser with crypto expertise who is qualified to submit an IRS-compliant valuation is not easy. None of the members of the two largest appraiser associations—the Appraisers Association of America and the American Society of Appraisers—list crypto as a specialty. While some nonprofit staff may suggest a name, most follow Adam Levine’s policy: “We don’t recommend appraisers for art or crypto or anything. That’s something for the donors to take care of… we don’t want to get embroiled with the IRS.”

Linda Selvin, executive director of the Appraisers Association of America, recommends seeking out individuals identified as “business appraisers” to conduct qualified crypto appraisals. Some companies that offer appraisal services for non-cash assets include Charitable Solutions, Havenwood Holdings, AppraiseItNow.com and Sickler, Tarpey & Associates. Platforms that enable crypto donations—such as The Giving Block, Dechomai and Fidelity—can also provide recommendations. Appraisal fees vary with the value of the gift: Randy Tarpey, a CPA and partner at Sickler, Tarpey & Associates, charges $120 for donations in the $5,000 range and $995 for donations above $500,000. Joe Kattan, owner of AppraiseItNow.com, said his fees range from $400 to $2,000.

Perhaps one of the defining features of crypto is its volatility, rising and falling in value rapidly since—unlike the U.S. dollar—it is not pegged to other currencies or backed by a central bank. Still, Haydon argued, “crypto is easier to appraise than art or collectibles. With a Picasso or a rare antique, you’re making subjective judgments about condition, provenance and comparable sales that may be years apart. With Bitcoin or Ethereum, you have transparent, real-time pricing market data across multiple exchanges, 24 hours a day. The asset’s value at any given moment is publicly verifiable.” CNBC provides daily pricing data for Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies; no one can tell you what that Picasso is worth today versus tomorrow.

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• Why Most Art Galleries Don’t Offer Discounts

• Want to Donate Your Collection to a Museum? Read This First