Valuing an experience item

Where a qualifying charity receives the money, a bidder may generally deduct only the amount they pay above an item's fair market value, and the organization is required to disclose that value at the time of the transaction. That is straightforward for a hotel stay and awkward for a keeper-for-a-day, because nobody sells one.

This is general information rather than advice for your institution. Your finance team and your counsel decide how you value and disclose. The routes below are what to bring them.

Start with what you already sell

Most zoos have more comparables than they realise. An encounter programme with a published price, a behind-the-scenes tour sold to the public, a private event hire rate, an education programme fee — any of these anchors a value for something adjacent.

• A two-hour keeper experience where you sell a one-hour version
• A private morning where you rent the site for events at an hourly rate
• An education session delivered offsite where you publish a schools fee

When there is genuinely no comparable

Some items have no market anywhere — naming an animal, shadowing the vet team, a night in the aquarium gallery. Two positions are commonly taken and both should be decided with finance rather than by a committee:

• Value it at the cost of provision — the staff time and materials the institution actually expends. Defensible, documentable, and usually low
• State that no fair market value is readily ascertainable and disclose that, where your advisers agree it applies

What is not workable is inventing a number that makes the item look impressive. A value stated on an item page is a representation to a donor and it should be one you could explain.

Say it on the item page

Put the value where the bidder sees it before they bid, not in a receipt afterwards. It satisfies the disclosure requirement and it helps the auction — a stated value gives bidders a reference point to bid past, and experience items routinely close well above it.

Donated items are the donor's problem, not yours

A business donating a hotel stay may ask you to state what their donation is worth. Record what they tell you and describe the item accurately; substantiating a donor's own deduction is between them and their adviser, and an institution that starts appraising donated goods has taken on something it does not need.

Keep the working

Write down how each experience item was valued and why, once, and reuse it. Zoo auctions repeat annually with much the same catalogue, and a documented basis is worth more than the number itself when somebody asks a year later.

General information, not tax advice for your institution. Valuation and disclosure are fact-specific — your finance team and counsel decide how you handle them.