PG Calc Featured Articles

As Charles Dickens wrote in his A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.” Those words were written in 1859, but they could have been written yesterday.

How do we even begin to describe the year that was 2020? It was a year of so many extremes – a once-in-a-century pandemic, the most widely contested elections in U.S. history, unprecedented economic collapse, historic unemployment, tsunamis of misinformation and disinformation, and truly unimaginable levels of mistrust, suffering, and despair in the souls of people everywhere.

As of the writing of this article, the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as the 46th President of the United States is just days away. Although past changes in the balance of political power have had little impact on overall charitable giving, we know that when donors experience uncertainty they tend to postpone and delay their giving decisions. This is a natural reaction: charitable giving is optional and, faced with uncertainty, the rational choice is to slow down or defer giving until the future becomes clearer.

Changes in tax law can create new and different gift opportunities. Gift planners will need to watch carefully and be prepared to react strategically to changing circumstances. What concerns might surface among donors? Could potential changes affect donors’ gift plans? How might we anticipate and address them? In this article we begin with a review of some concerns that are likely to be on donors’ minds with respect to charitable giving followed by a discussion of some of the essential processes by which Washington works.

PG Calc speculates and offers commentary about impending changes to Federal tax policy and the possible impacts on charitable giving. However, written on the eve of America’s transition to the Biden/Harris administration and the beginning of the 117^th Congress, there’s a good chance that parts of it will pass into the category of "things we know for sure that just ain't so."

The global pandemic created by the spread of COVID-19 has impacted millions of lives, disrupted the operations of charities and organizations, and upended planned giving fundraising as we know it. Yet from this global crisis, we have witnessed several remarkable planned giving success stories from our clients. Following are four of these successes that we hope will prove educational and inspirational.

Unveiled at the CGP 2020 Conference this month, The National Standards for Gift Planning Success ("NSGPS" or "Standards") are designed to help you engineer a successful planned giving program. Much more than a just simple list of best practices, the NSGPS is a comprehensive toolkit to help identify and overcome challenges that may be hindering your gift planning efforts. The Standards are not prescriptive and are scalable to the size and maturity of your program, allowing you to adapt and address current needs while building on your strengths.

Qualified charitable distributions (QCDs), also known as charitable IRA rollovers, are particularly appealing to donors because they provide a tax benefit whether or not the donor itemizes deductions. While on the surface they seem simple – request a payment go directly from the plan administrator to a qualifying charity – there are nuances to these types of gifts of which charities should be aware. Let’s take a closer look at some of those subtleties as they relate to QCD requirements.

Planned giving departments need to demonstrate accountability for results in terms of gift revenue. Our challenge, of course, is that we generally don’t know how much planned gift revenue is coming or when it will come in, making it very difficult to accurately measure the results of current efforts. Let’s look at how using a combination of historical realized planned gifts and current calculations can generate a reasonable picture of the value of your planned gift pipeline.

Life is full of rules, and planned giving is certainly no exception. When we talk about IRS rules and planned giving, we mean not only specific sections of the federal tax code, but also IRS rulings, conditions, limitations, and the like. In putting together our webinar for August 27, which will highlight 10 rules that gift planners should know, we thought it might be helpful to provide a brief preview in this format.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, better known as the CARES Act, became law in late March. The Act includes several provisions of interest to gift planners. Arguably the most significant of these is the ability to waive the usual 60%-of-adjusted-gross-income limit on deductions for gifts of cash made to public charities in 2020. This change creates several gift opportunities that will appeal to some donors.

At this point, we find ourselves in seemingly unprecedented times. The COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping the globe, infecting millions of people, and leaving hundreds of thousands of fatalities in its wake. The worst is likely over in China, and life is starting to return to some new kind of normal. In Europe, a few countries have reached the so-called apex, but other countries are at varying stages along the spectrum of the crisis. In the U.S., the picture changes greatly from state to state. By most accounts, New York – the first epicenter – has seen its peak of the crisis and is now on the downside, but the majority of states are still facing a significant ramping up in the coming days and weeks. The human toll is beyond anyone’s worst imagination, and it will certainly get worse before it gets better. This will define our country and modern-day societies for generations to come. We attempt to offer some perspective in a blog post entitled Peaks, Valleys, and Life In Between.