<p>There are lots of ways for a gift to come through truly anonymously:</p>
<p>Our charter school regularly gets gifts via Schwab or Fidelity’s charitable gift funds, and the checks sometimes come without any letter accompanying them identifying the donor. Luckily most of the time the donor has told us to expect a check, but we have resorted to publishing a note in the newsletter asking who we can thank because the check simply says “Fidelity”.</p>
<p>We also get unexpectedly anonymous gifts through stock donations, which show up in our brokerage account with no information about the donor. You know that you got 500 shares of Starbucks stock on a certain date. That’s it.</p>
<p>We also get donations that come through lawyer’s trust accounts, though in our case they have always been accompanied by a letter identifying the donor. </p>
<p>Our gifts are a lot smaller than the ones referenced in this article, but given the hours I’ve spent trying to track down mystery donors who didn’t intend to be mysterious, I don’t doubt that it is perfectly possible to make donations, even large ones, anonymously.</p>