Planned Giving for the Moderate Donor

Almost all charities have donors who look much like my father. They are not wealthy but they are generous and committed, and they demonstrate that commitment through regular, even if small, annual contributions. They also are prime prospects for a planned gift.

In 2000, the National Committee on Planned Giving conducted national research study about patterns of giving that found that more than 70 percent of those who put a charity in their wills and more than 60 percent of those who established charitable gift annuities or charitable trusts had incomes of less than $100,000, and more than one third of those in both categories earned less than $50,000. Immense wealth clearly is not an essential to be a planned-gift donor. And most of these donors’ estates come nowhere near the point at which the estate tax kicks in.