A New Kind of CGA Stems from the SECURE Act

This has been a difficult year by any metric. Planned giving may be far from many minds, but it can be particularly valuable for donors motivated to give during this trying time. Indeed, many of our charitable partners report significant upticks in grantmaking by their donors.   The first two months of 2020 were busier…

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Extreme Market Volatility = CGA Risk Management Time

"Volatility Ahead" road sign.

Charitable Solutions has been obsessing on gift annuity risk management since the 90s. In fact, other than non-cash asset solutions, charitable gift annuity risk management is one of our core services.  Why? FIRST: CGAs are one of the only gifts where the charity can actually lose more money than the original donation! SECOND: No one…

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Looking Back…Looking Ahead

Charitable Solutions, LLC and Dechomai Foundations:  A Decade in Review I was planning to post our 2019 accomplishments and then realized DECADE successes would be more appropriate… especially given the fact that we celebrated 17 years in business on January 15th!       The Low Points In October of 2010, I lost my very…

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MORE Reasons to Stop Declining Noncash Gifts!

Charitable Solutions, LLC was founded to help capture gifts for charities that otherwise would have been declined – specifically focusing on noncash assets and gift annuities.  Why?  Because these are the only types of gifts where a charity, without prudent management, can actually lose more money than the original gift.  In fact, every one of…

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Using Real Estate to Fund Immediate Gift Annuities – A Creative Twist

A Charitable Gift Annuity (CGA) may be funded with unique or hard-to-liquidate assets as well as cash or marketable securities.  Charities face risks inherent in using real estate (or other non-cash assets) to fund an annuity: that of making the annuity payments before the proceeds of sale have been realized. Two commonly used tactics to…

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Case Study: Simplifying CGAs to Solve Multiple Problems

Charitable Gift Annuities don’t need to be complicated and can address straight forward tax situations. A few months ago, a prospect came to us after having sold her residence for a price that resulted in capital gains in excess of the $250,000 lifetime exclusion. How could she minimize this capital gains tax exposure while using the…

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Cryptocurrency:Are You Keeping Up?

Cryptocurrency has been in the news recently for a couple of reasons, and we thought it might be helpful to share our perspective on this interesting asset for charitable giving purposes. The volatility of Bitcoin, the most well-known of the public cryptocurrencies, has led the press coverage over the past few years. Since Jan 2017, the Bitcoin…

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An S-Corp Gift

There are more S-corps than C-corps and LLCs combined – but very few donations are occurring. With S-corps, there are subtle nuances that must be considered, not the least of which include the issue of unrelated taxable income (UBTI) on profits earned (pre and post contribution gain) as well as any income during the holding period. S-corporations…

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Donor Queries

Are you anxious about having a discussion with one of your donors about an illiquid asset gift? It doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated, and you do not need to know everything about a particular asset type. Even those new to the development role can be as effective at these conversations as the veterans…

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Two Gifts–One Transaction

Combining two split interest gift types into a single transaction isn’t easy. Charitable Solutions (CS) had a situation presented to us earlier this year, and through some creative thinking and careful risk management, we crafted a great gift solution for the donor. It took our CS team of Bryan, Gary, and Ryan to figure this…

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