Every time I stumble on a really important legal ruling or fact or principal, I always get a “been there, done that” email from a reader. I don’t mind – maybe I was sleeping when that ruling popped up in my email. This one though – I really doubt my readers out there will have...
I got one of those questions that throws off most planned giving professionals: Can our donor give us a chunk of funds and “advise” on the investment of the gift? (this was a donor who already had committed his entire multi-million dollar estate to the charity but was now getting fancy, thinking that he was...
Really, when? I can’t really knock Mr. Schervish and Mr. Havens too much because their wealth transfer hysteria spurred a lot of planned giving hiring – including my current job! But, take a look at this slide I created for a presentation I am giving on demographics for a planned giving council: Wealth Transfer Bequests...
I struggle often about gift annuities (“CGA”) – are they all they are cracked up to be (for nonprofits)? Even before the market crash last year, various state regulatory struggles have made it more and more difficult to operate widespread, multi-state or national gift annuity programs. Throw in market volatility and other investment uncertainty, and...
Thanks to David Moss who forwarded this story to me from the New York Times. It is a must read for any fundraising professional who gets approached with any insurance deals that are too good to be true (as 99.9999% of them are): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/education/13oklahoma.html?scp=2&sq=pickens&st=cse This stuff is just rotten – and I remember clearly that...