Donations
A citizen may bestow shares or Looneys upon another as an act of loyalty, fellowship, or an inexplicable desire to put all of one’s eggs into a single basket. Le Council levies a ceremonial tribute on the giver and records every donation on the public register.
Le Council calls the register The Roll of Donations. It keeps it in perpetuity.
It is not a trade
Section titled “It is not a trade”A donation never touches a team’s pool. It moves no price, prints nothing on the chart, and takes no open ice. It only moves a position—or a balance—from one account to another.
This matters for two reasons. Buying a bloc through donations is cheaper than buying one through the market, which moves the price against you the whole way up. And shares carry voting weight at the S.H.I.F.T., so supporters who pool their holdings may come to control a team’s front office.
Le Council permits this. Le Council notes only that the register is public, and that many hands make light work.
The tribute
Section titled “The tribute”The tribute is paid by the giver, on top of the gift, and is burned. It is not arbitrary— each rate is anchored to what the same manoeuvre would have cost through ordinary channels:
| Donation | Tribute | Why that number |
|---|---|---|
| Shares | 6% of the block’s market value | A round trip through the market costs 2% to sell plus 2% to buy back. The tribute sits above the round trip, so donating is never the cheaper way to move a position—you are paying for the absence of slippage, not dodging the brokerage. (It was 4% when donations opened.) |
| Looneys | 6% | When the tribute was set it was 10%, because a tenth was what the wealth tax took. Parking Looneys in a friend’s account to duck the levy was meant to cost roughly what the levy cost. The wealth tax has since been rebuilt in bands, and no longer takes a tenth of anything; the tribute now stands at 6%. |
Le Council tunes both rates live. The rate shown on the form is the rate that applies.
The gates
Section titled “The gates”Le Council has fenced the practice rather than forbidding it:
- A lock period. What arrives cannot be passed onward for seventy-two hours, and donated shares cannot be sold during it either.
- Rolling caps on value moved, applied in both directions—on what you send and on what you receive.
- A minimum, below which nothing is recorded. Dust does not go on the roll.
- A minimum account age before an account may send at all.
- Only free shares. Shares promised to an open offer at Le Marché Gelé sit in la Glacière and cannot be given away until the offer settles or is withdrawn. “You don’t own that many free shares.”
- The ten-percent ceiling. S.L.U.S.H. declines a donation that would take the recipient past ten percent of a team that is not theirs, on exactly the same terms it declines the purchase. See one team to a citizen. (Until the Eve of Season 4 the ceiling was a third.)
You cannot endow yourself. The Ice notices these things.
A gift is not an offer
Section titled “A gift is not an offer”A donation asks for nothing back. If you want something back, that is a trade, and trades go to Le Marché Gelé, where O.F.F.R.E. holds both halves. The Marché keeps its own transfer window, and only the unmatched part of a trade—the gift-shaped part—spends it.
The register
Section titled “The register”Every donation is entered publicly: who gave, who received, what moved, the tribute burned, and when. Messages attached to a donation are published with it.
Le Council offers no commentary on its contents. When the roll is empty it says only:
Nothing has been given yet. The penguins are watching.
See also
Section titled “See also”- The Exchange—where the shares come from and what the caps mean.
- The S.H.I.F.T.—what a pooled bloc of shares can do.
- Economy & betting—Looneys, and where they come from.
- Taxes—the wealth tax the Looney tribute was first anchored to.
- Le Marché Gelé—when you do want something in return.