From the PG Calc Blog: Why It's Time for PGM Desktop to Retire

By now you know about the upcoming retirement of Planned Giving Manager (PGM desktop) and the migration route to PGM Anywhere. This process has been seven years in the making, as we originally targeted PGM Anywhere to run basic calculations on tablets and have been expanding its functionality from year to year to eventually take the place of PGM desktop.

We have one last update to PGM desktop slated for December 2020/January 2021 with indexed tax tables for 2021 as well as a new feature to facilitate loading .inp files created in PGM desktop into PGM Anywhere. We want to give clients a smooth path for moving from PGM desktop to PGM Anywhere.

Read the full blog post.

CGP 2020 Conference

While we missed seeing everyone in person at the CGP 2020 Conference this month, we were impressed by the lineup of speakers and thoughtful sessions. The technology for the virtual experience worked well and provided opportunity for interaction with the presenters. We enjoyed seeing several of you at our virtual exhibit hall booth. Gary was thrilled and honored to be inducted into the CGP Hall of Fame, and we hope you have minute to see the great introduction he received from Conrad Teitell if you didn’t get to see it during the conference.

The Switch to AWS is Almost Complete

As you may know, PG Calc is in the process of migrating our software solutions to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, and we expect the process will be complete in the next few months.

According to PG Calc’s Chief Technology Officer Warren Bailey, there are several key advantages:

"AWS has created a state-of-the-art hosting infrastructure; their server environment offers us greater resiliency and the ability to facilitate backups more efficiently. Perhaps most importantly, it enables us to have more robust native security, auditing, and monitoring for our systems. It will also allow us to scale much more quickly, including adding more computing power on the fly at peak times, as we continue to improve and expand the trusted planned giving solutions for which PG Calc is so well known."

We have gone to great lengths to make sure there will not be any disruption during the transition and will keep you updated as the migration progresses. If you or your IT security team have any questions about how this affects you, please reach out to John Garvey at 617-497-4970 x1209 or jgarvey@pgcalc.com.

The 2021 Training Schedule is Here!

Well, half of it is here. Given the uncertain times we are in, we have decided to schedule ONLINE classes only through June. At some point in the spring we will assess whether the second half of the year will continue to be online only - or if we can meet in person!

Click here to view the schedule.

CGA Manual Updated for 2020

We have just completed our 2020 update of Charitable Gift Annuities: The Complete Resource Manual. The CGA Manual is our go-to resource for answering all your questions about operating a gift annuity program and handling the details of specific gift situations. This year’s update includes dozens of examples revised to reflect the latest ACGA suggested maximum annuity rates and current rock-bottom IRS discount rates, as well as new sections on topics such as making payments to divorcing annuitants and funding an annuity with non-IRA retirement assets.

The manual is available in electronic and hardcopy formats. Recognizing that many of our CGA Manual subscribers are working from home, within the next few days we will be sending the electronic version to all our subscribers to make sure they all have access to their updated manual. We expect to send the printed manual within a few weeks to our print subscribers who want it this year.

You can learn more about the CGA Manual or order your own copy on our website.