Planned giving news and information from PG Calc
            
Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here.
            
eRate Newsletter October 20, 2015  

  IRS Discount Rate: November 2.0%

The valuation rate for gifts to new pooled income funds
in 2015 is 1.2%.
 
 


Gift Annuity Programs: To Start, Re-Start, or Not to Start... These Are the Questions
The decision to start a gift annuity program should not be taken lightly. With gift annuities, you are entering into a life-long relationship with your donor, and there are significant legal and financial obligations that accompany it. It is not unusual for charities that have recently launched a gift annuity program to find that the results have not met expectations due to insufficient planning or resources.

In this month's featured article, we give you the questions your organization needs to answer when starting or re-evaluating a gift annuity program. 

Hamlet - To Be or Not To Be

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>   PRINT THE FULL ARTICLE >>
 
 
 
  IN THIS ISSUE  
 
 

Quick Tip: Recording a Death From Prior Years in GiftWrap 
Gift administrators sometimes learn that a beneficiary passed away long after the actual date of death. This situation requires a little extra effort in GiftWrap.

Ordinarily, the Record Death function in GiftWrap can automate most of the adjustments that need to be made after the death of an income beneficiary. These adjustments include identifying a successor beneficiary, if any, adjusting payment and tax schedules for the deceased and successor beneficiaries, and computing the unrecovered investment in contract for gift annuities.

However, GiftWrap is able to make automated adjustments only when the date of death is in GiftWrap’s current organization year or one year prior. If the death occurred earlier than that, most adjustments must be made manually. For instance, if GiftWrap’s organization year is 2015, Record Death can automate adjustments for deaths that occurred in 2015 or 2014, but not for deaths that occurred in 2013 or earlier. Record Death will display a message letting you know that adjustments have not been made.

When faced with this situation, first produce the Gift Profiles for all gifts associated with the deceased person, void any uncashed checks that were issued, and then run Record Death. Next, open each gift associated with the deceased person and manually delete all payments that were not actually issued and cashed, edit the tax schedule to show the actual amount distributed in the year of death, and change the ending year from 9999 to the year of the death. If there is a successor beneficiary, you will need to change that person’s association from Inactive to Active, then manually enter the payment and tax schedules.

This brief overview is intended to alert you to the need to make manual adjustments when recording a death that occurred too long ago. As always, PG Calc’s client support team is ready and happy to assist you when this situation arises.

 
 

Marketing Corner: Charitable Gift Annuity Marketing Survey Findings - Resources, Policies and Patterns
After surveying over 340 organizations on how they market gift annuities, we learned something exciting: more than a third of the organizations we surveyed saw an increase in gift annuity donors in the past two years.

In this blog post, we dive further into the survey results and investigate some of the factors that may have contributed to the increase in new CGA donors. Read more >>

Graph of Increase in New CGA Donors

 

Latest GiftWrap Upgrade Includes Enhanced Payment Features
On October 18th, we released GiftWrap 4.2.7, which includes a number of enhancements. You now have the option to move weekend dates to the prior Friday for EFT payment files. In addition, you can add wire and trust-to-trust payments to the EFT mail merge file and batch check clears. The update also includes support for the Chrome browser and a number of security enhancements.

 

Updated CGA Manual Available Soon
Our 2015 update of Charitable Gift Annuities: The Complete Resource Manual is about to go to the printer. Subscribers to the printed manual should receive their updates, plus updated prototype documents on CD, by mid November. Subscribers to the electronic version should receive their new Manual in pdf format and updated prototype documents by early November.

CGA ManualFor 15 years now, charities, advisors, and financial institutions have turned to the CGA Manual as an authoritative and comprehensive source of information and ideas regarding all aspects of gift annuities. Don’t have your own yet? To find out what you’ve been missing and place your order, call 888-497-4970 or click here.

 

2016 Training Schedule Now Available
Regularly attending training will keep your skills fresh and your knowledge current with the latest planned giving trends. PG Calc offers a variety of classroom-style trainings to support planned giving programs. Taught by our experienced staff members, the courses mix applications of our software and theoretical insights to further your professional development.

View the full training schedule >>

 

Win an iPad at NCPP
Attending the National Conference on Philanthropic Planning (NCPP) this week? Stop by PG Calc’s booth to enter to win an iPad! 

While you’re there, you can demo PGM Anywhere, our gift proposal software for your tablet. Can’t wait for the conference to see for yourself? PGM clients can sign up to get PGM Anywhere right now.

iPad

 
 

Bequest Manager Gives Hadassah Added Insight Into Their Bequest Program
Melody Hobebesion, Trusts and Estates Attorney, Planned Giving & Estates, moved Hadassah's bequest program records into Bequest Manager's powerful database two years ago. With Bequest Manager's projected expectancy value and cash flow reports, Hadassah was able to get a pulse on their bequest program.

"Bequest Manager gave us much more insight into the health of our bequest program. Organizing our files in a central online database with meaningful reporting allowed us to quickly extrapolate data whenever we needed it. After entering our records into Bequest Manager, we discovered the true magnitude of our bequest program – including some gifts whose value we weren’t previously aware of!”

Hadassah Logo

Learn more about Hadassah  >>
Learn more about Bequest Manager  >> 

 
UPCOMING WEBINAR

The Best Metrics for Measuring Planned Giving Marketing Success



Presented by Andrew Palmer, Director, Marketing Services

Thursday, October 29
1 PM - 2:30 PM EDT

Register

UPCOMING TRAINING

Gift Planning with Planned Giving Manager
November 9-10
Los Angeles, CA

Gift Administration with GiftWrap
November 2-3
Cambridge, MA

View

UPCOMING CONFERENCES

National Conference on Philanthropic Planning
October 21-23
Orlando, FL

Philadelphia Planned Giving Day
October 29
Philadelphia, PA

Minnesota Planned Giving Conference
November 18-19
St. Paul, MN

View 

www.pgcalc.com
sales: 888-497-4970 | info@pgcalc.com
support: 888-474-2252 | support@pgcalc.com