Lucy Cavendish College

If you are a US taxpayer, and you make your donation via our partner organisation (Cambridge in America) then your crypto donation is tax deductible. The IRS classifies cryptocurrency as property for tax purposes which means it is typically the most tax efficient way to support your favourite cause. When donating crypto, you receive a tax deduction for the fair market value of the crypto, and you avoid the capital gains tax you would have incurred if you had sold the crypto and then made a donation.

For UK tax-payers your crypto donation will not currently qualify for Gift Aid but may be eligible for relief from Capital Gains Tax, assuming it takes place on a no-gain, no-loss basis.

You should contact your tax adviser before relying on this guidance.

In order to receive a receipt with your donation, you must enter your email when making the donation. You will automatically receive a receipt from receipts@thegivingblock.com as soon as the transaction is confirmed on the blockchain. This changes depending on the blockchain – you can refer to this guide for estimates and more information. Please note that you will receive a receipt every time you donate with our wallet address. 

All cryptocurrency donations are nonrefundable.

As soon as a crypto donation is made it is immediately converted into dollars or pounds and put to work.

When we receive your donation it is understood that it was made to support our mission and we are grateful for your support. We do not offer refunds on any donations that are made in cryptocurrency.

Please only send currencies listed on our donation portal. Do not send other cryptocurrencies (including layer 2, wrapped tokens, NFTs, ERC-721s, BEP20s, or other ERC-20 tokens not listed) as they will be lost.

When using our crypto donation portal you may notice that a new wallet address is created every time. This is because it uses dynamic wallet addresses.

This is done to protect your privacy and ours.

All addresses that are generated are associated with your donor information and ours. This means that you can reuse the address as often as you’d like or you can generate a new one each time. It’s up to you. In some cases, donors may want to re-use an address because they’ve added it as a payout address in an app or smart contract.

Note that for ETH, after the first donation is sent, the address is converted to a smart contract.

We are not mining or investing crypto. The gifts will be automatically converted into either dollars or pounds and transferred to our account.

Cryptocurrencies are evolving fast and there has been significant progress with regard to energy efficiency. For instance, ETH, the most commonly donated cryptocurrency on the platform we use, recently upgraded to a more efficient protocol and, as a result, it was able to reduce its energy requirements by over 99%. However, even though the energy usage and the resulting emissions from any gifts may be minimal, the carbon impact of all donations will be calculated and twice as many carbon offsets will be purchased so that instead of merely neutralising any carbon impact, we will be a clear net positive for the environment.

If you have any questions regarding crypto and other giving opportunities, please contact the Development Office on +44 (0)1223 339241 or email development@lucy.cam.ac.uk.