Webinars

Donor-advised funds have become a major source of charitable dollars that continues to grow. In addition to the well-known DAFs sponsored by financial institutions such as Fidelity and Vanguard, more and more charities are sponsoring their own DAF programs. New technology is making it easier than ever for charities to offer the convenience and flexibility of DAFs to their own donors.

Why would my organization want to do that? How have others fared? What rules have they put in place? Is it hard or can the administration be outsourced? Will a DAF attract new donors and/or larger donations?

Every organization even remotely contemplating a DAF of its own should ask these questions. Attend this webinar to learn the answers. Organizations that already sponsor a DAF will find the discussion useful for evaluating their current practices and policies.

No matter the size of the charity and no matter the size of the bequest, sometimes the receipt of a bequest does not “go smoothly." What’s more, there are several typical problems which seem to occur repeatedly. Fortunately, they represent a minority of the bequests received by charities – but they can take up a majority of your time in dealing with them.

Andrew Fussner’s team at the American Heart Association handles roughly 800 new estates every year, about 10% of which have some sort of “problem.” Andrew will draw on his vast experience handling estate gifts to discuss ten common estate settlement problems. He will identify each problem and then describe what you can do to resolve it or avoid it in the first place so that your organization receives the funds your donor intended in a timely manner.

Life insurance: the bane of charitable giving, right? Not so fast! Too often, life insurance is presented as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. That’s too bad because a well-planned contribution of life insurance can be extremely beneficial for the organization as well as the donor. Life insurance is a powerful financial planning tool but, at its core, a charitable contribution of life insurance is simply a gift of valuable property. In this webinar, we will explore examples of life insurance gifts that really worked and review some of the pitfalls to be avoided.

Getting new legacy pledgers or legacy society members is great. But the data show that a “count it and forget it” approach won’t work. So, what comes next? In this session, we’ll look at practical strategies that help to keep the gift plans in place. Next, we’ll see how to make the gifts dramatically larger. Finally, we’ll explore how to convert these legacy plans into lifetime gifts. Experimental research results and real-world practice point the way to a new source of fundraising success.

Your gift annuitant has stopped depositing her payments. Payments to another annuitant keep being returned as undeliverable. Remainder trust payments keep being deposited by a beneficiary who is well past 100. Are they really still alive? What should you do?

Missing beneficiaries is an ongoing challenge for many planned giving programs. In this webinar, Morgan Heck will draw on her 13 years of experience as a prospect researcher to share practical strategies and useful resources for finding beneficiaries and donors who have gone missing. PG Calc’s Kara Morin will present Morgan with common missing person cases and offer advice on what to do if a person simply can’t be found.

The IRS’s rules for establishing the date of a gift can be complicated. There’s the mailbox rule, of course, but what if your donor is not mailing a check by U.S. mail? The rules can get arcane quickly. And getting the date of gift right can be important for valuing the gift, and especially at year-end when a difference of a day or two could affect which year the donor can take their deduction. It’s also critical that donors substantiate their gift properly so they can take that deduction at all.

In this free Q&A webinar, PG Calc consultants Jeff Lydenberg and Edie Matulka will spend a few minutes reviewing common date-of-gift situations and substantiation requirements, then spend the bulk of the hour answering all your questions about dates of gift and the IRS’s gift substantiation requirements.

Sometimes a gift annuitant doesn’t need their gift annuity payments anymore. Or the income beneficiary of a shrinking charitable remainder trust wants to preserve its principal for a charity they love. Or the life tenant of a retained life estate is ready to move out of their home. With split interest charitable gifts, if all parties agree, the arrangement can be terminated at any point in time. In many cases, the person giving up the benefit will be entitled to an additional charitable tax deduction.

In this webinar, Jeffrey Frye and Jay Pacitti will review situations where a life income beneficiary or a life tenant may want to terminate their interest. They will discuss the steps involved in terminating a split interest gift, as well as how to compute the value of the benefit that is being relinquished and the potential for a tax deduction.

Whether you are a gift planning specialist or a fundraising generalist, there are some essentials you should know about Federal taxes. In this webinar, Craig Wruck will cover the basics of the income tax and transfer taxes (gift taxes, estate taxes, generation skipping transfer taxes). Craig’s focus will be on a conceptual understanding that will equip you to provide clear and concise explanations to your donors. In addition to the basics of taxation, Craig will describe the tax benefits associated with charitable gifts and factors that can affect these benefits. His discussion will be based on current tax law.