Unclaimed Property — Can Your Nonprofit Claim It?

Fundraising is tough! It’s possible there are valuable assets just waiting for your nonprofit organization to claim with very little effort. Unclaimed property, also known as abandoned property, typically involves intangible personal property that belongs to an individual or organization, but which is turned over by financial institutions and other organizations to states’ unclaimed property offices after a specified period of time during which there has been no activity with respect to the property. Nonprofit organizations often are the rightful owners of this property.

Unclaimed property records can be searched on a state-by-state basis by visiting the website of each state’s comptroller or other office charged with administering the unclaimed property program. The website www.unclaimed.org, run by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), provides links to each state’s unclaimed property website.

But conveniently, nonprofits can run a multi-state search on the NAUPA-endorsed website, www.MissingMoney.com.

Here’s a link to an article on the subject by the law firm Venable LLP, which has a large nonprofit practice — https://www.venable.com/insights/publications/2019/05/claiming-whats-yours-states-abandoned-property.