PG Calc Blog

The National Association of Charitable Gift Planners (CGP) created a task force charged with defining metrics to evaluate the work of gift planning fundraisers and to develop guidelines for criteria to measure the performance of planned giving programs. The task force has not issued its final report, but we have some feedback on their likely recommendations. Best practice performance metrics will provide a basis for evaluating the success of a charity’s planned giving efforts.

Our Client Services staff regularly takes client calls that go something like this: Client: I think your software is giving me the wrong deduction. PG Calc Client Services: Can you please explain what you mean? Client:  Sure.  My donor is 75 years old, so her life expectancy is 11.1 years using the 2000CM mortality table. I know the deduction calculation uses the 2000CM table but when I compute the deduction for a 5% unitrust with a fixed term of 11.1 years, I get a lower deduction than when I compute the deduction for the same unitrust that lasts for my donor’s lifetime. That doesn’t make sense! It does, actually.  Let me explain.

Having just returned from the National Conference on Philanthropic Planning, I thought it would be timely to share a few marketing takeaways. While there is nothing revolutionary to report, it’s always nice to talk with colleagues about their marketing successes and challenges. Here’s what I gleaned from the sessions I attended.

Annuity 2000. 2012 IAR. 1983 Basic. 2000CM. Perhaps you are familiar with one or more of these terms. They are the names of mortality tables that are important to planned giving calculations of one kind or another. With so many different mortality tables in play, it’s no wonder that gift planners get confused about which table is used for what purpose and why . . . to the extent that they think about them at all. To help dispel the confusion, I briefly describe below what a mortality table is and the specific use and characteristics of the four mortality tables that gift planners need to be most aware of.

The Republican leadership on Wednesday September 27, 2017 released a framework for proposed tax reforms for consideration by Congress.  While the framework proposes retaining the income tax charitable deduction, it also proposes nearly doubling the standard deduction.  Reducing the number of itemizers arguably reduces charitable contributions without the incentive of itemized charitable gifts.  Nonetheless, giving is motivated by more than just tax incentives.  It remains to be seen how decreasing the number of itemizers might affect charitable giving.