I'm not sure that I agree that the donor had no right to place an expiration. Of course, I'm not sure I disagree. If she wants to donate a Thanksgiving dinner specifically then it has to be by Thursday. Let's say I want to donate quilt (and that I can quilt). So my donation is a quilt that will fit your bed. But I am even more specific and say I am donating a U of M quilt. Now, on the one hand I could be open to a MSU, OSU or even flowered quilt but it seems like if I am making the donation then I do have the option of placing limits.
If you want to give a U of M quilt,
then give a U of M quilt, as in the physical object and not a gift certificate to Quilts R Us. By the same token, if you want the dinner to only be eaten on Thursday and not at someone's Saturday Thanksgiving dinner, then find some way to stipulate that through the store, or take the winner out to a turkey dinner on Thursday yourself, or whatever. (Edit: I didn't realize you were making the quilt in your example. Yes, if you are both the donor
and the vendor, you can stipulate that you will only make a U of M quilt. Just like if you were actually cooking the dinner, you could make them stick with turkey or with your chosen date or whatever.)
But if you give a gift certificate that does not already have an expiration date through the vendor, you can
say what you'd like the person to do with it, but it stops being yours once you've donated it and you can't make the person honor your wish. They've paid for the right to do whatever they want with it. And you can't involve the vendor in your personal quirks without even telling them.
And it seems rather mean-spirited to suggest that Thanksgiving dinner can only only only be eaten on Thursday considering we have had several ehellions post in this thread that they had to have it Friday or Saturday to get their whole family together, which is surely more important that the technical day of Thursday.