Planned giving professionals often spend time with the wealthiest of donors, those for whom the tax aspects of their giving is frequently a significant driver. For these conversations, the technical details and legal aspects of charitable gift vehicles, such as charitable remainder trusts, can be an essential element in the pursuit of an optimum gift.

However, it is important to consider what drives the majority of donors who make up the lion’s share of planned gifts. Charitable bequests continue to be a huge source of giving, even though they don’t afford tax benefits for most donors. According to Giving USA, testamentary gifts hover between 8% and 10% of total giving each year. Our clients regularly receive more than 90% of their planned giving revenue through charitable bequests, beneficiary designations, and other revocable forms. These ratios have not changed much in the past 40 years despite changes in various tax laws.

The democratization of charitable gift planning – ensuring the tools of charitable gift planning are accessible to all, not just a few – can take many forms, some familiar and some newer. Understanding and appreciating these concepts and trends is critical for today’s planned giving officer.

We get a lot of calls from clients regarding how to handle unclaimed payments related to life income gifts. We can help clients with the mechanical aspects in GiftWrap, of course, but the real challenges have more to do with policies and protocol. What is the right way to manage the payments that are due to people whose whereabouts are unknown? And how long is a charity – or an agent thereof – supposed to hold those funds before state laws dictate specific actions under abandoned property laws? We will go over those issues in this article.

Uncashed checks, or tax forms and checks returned undeliverable! These are some of the most frequent and frustrating challenges for administrators of life income gifts.

With outright gifts, you deposit a donor’s check or other form of donation, send an acknowledgement letter, enter the person into your database, and reach out periodically. You certainly try to keep up with people’s moves … but for life income gifts, the stakes are a bit higher. Your organization must make income payments on a scheduled basis.

What to do?

One of the planned giving trends that has evolved in recent years is the voluntary termination of life income gift arrangements. While not a part of the original intent in the creation of these gift plans, surrendering the remaining lifetime income in these split-interest gifts has become popular for a number of reasons. Certainly, there are obvious benefits to the sponsoring charitable organizations – these terminations eliminate the charity’s ongoing liability for payments, and of course, they receive the remainder amounts sooner than otherwise would be the case – but there are also benefits to the donors who relinquish their interests.