Endowments and Planned Gifts: What and Why?

* Make significant investment in the future. Many donors make larger endowment gifts through planned-giving vehicles than the combined value of all the current-use gifts they have made previously. Endowment gifts are sometimes the donor’s last (and largest) gift to the organizations they value most. Donors can receive great satisfaction from making significant investments in the future from assets accumulated over their lifetimes. In the case of deferred planned gifts, the gifts may be the donors’ final acts of contributing to the organization or the work that they find most valuable.