[Jessie Merrell]

Hello everyone,

Upon thinking about last weeks webinar regarding paper work and forms, I was wondering if it was necessary to maintain a temporary custody form receipt if the person fills out a donation/ gift form or a loan form on the spot? My institution is very small (3 paid employees) and we used to have a TC form but felt it was redundant to then mail a donation or loan form to the person if we knew we were going to keep the item, especially since the forms have similar wording.

Any thoughts?

[Grant Briscoe]

If anything happens between the donation and the temporary custody, then yes. Just to be safe, at my museum we have them fill out two donation forms, a “consideration” form and then the official donation form.
If they are in a rush, then I ask them to only fill out one, sign both where their signature is required, and then I offer to mail them the copies after I duplicate what they said on the other form they didn’t write it out. This just saves writing for them.

But if they aren’t donating right then and there you definitely need to have a temporary custody form in case anything crazy happens.

[Evelyn]

We have a policy of not accepting anything until a gift form has been signed. We have too many objects in limbo when we can’t contact the potential donor to take back items that don’t meet our mandate.

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