I am in search of current tax donation guidelines regarding fundraising events. Here is the situation: We are hosting two events featuring a "famous person" on the same day. One event will serve food. One event is entertainment with the "famous person" reading a part. I believe the first event donation will be the cost of ticket minus the cost of the "meal". The second event is where we are having trouble coming up with the tax donation portion. If not for the "famous person" we would not be charging for this event. This is strictly to raise money. Any ideas of whether or not we can give full donation of the ticket price or is there an "entertainment" ticket price that needs to be deducted? Thank you, Belinda Goodman Institutional Advancement and Alumni

The only guidline I can think of is to use your cost basis for the "famous person" to do the reading. Of course if there is a fee involved, it probably covers both events, in which case you may want to allocate the fee based on time spent at each event, or some other fair formula, to get a reasonable share of cost for the reading. If there are no fees paid, but you have reimbursed them in any way for costs, that becomes your cost basis. You may be left with only allocating facility overhead and place a modest benefit, such as $10, to the ticket costs. I hope this helps. Tom Froelich

See the IRS article on "Charitable Contributions - Quid Pro Quo Contributions" - specifically addresses your situation - a museum is selling charitable event tickets for a special tour of the museum led by a famous person.  Museum tours with normal tour guides are free.  IRS said FMV of the famous person tour is therefore also zero (free).  This result changes if the person normally does readings on a commercial basis for which people can buy tickets to attend.  In that case the FMV would be whatever tickets to the person's commercial readings would cost.