September eRate: Featured Article

It’s All Good, But Can You See the Future?

**Projecting Remainder Amounts for Bequest Gifts in PG Calc’s Bequest Manager Application**

A healthy and robust planned giving program typically includes a broad array of split-interest gift arrangements – certainly the familiar life income gifts – charitable gift annuities, charitable remainder trusts, (perhaps) a pooled income fund, and occasionally even a retained life estate or two – but the largest portions of most programs invariably consist of bequests and other gifts triggered upon the deaths of the donors. Whatever the variety in each organization’s program, the general idea is that the benefits to the charity will come at a later point in time. This means we are put in the position of expecting charitable gifts to be realized in the future, and we are presented with the challenge of how to estimate the values of those gifts over time.

PG Calc’s Bequest Manager application is a subset of the company’s venerable GiftWrap system, which is an industry-leading product specifically designed and built for the ongoing management and administration of planned gifts. Bequest Manager allows for booking donors’ intended bequests in a preliminary status as soon as each individual provides notice to the charity.

The charity can and should be recording every mention of an intended bequest gift by a donor, and that information is valuable by itself, but when it is used to project the ultimate realized amounts in the future, the results can be astounding.

WEBINAR August 26

Notice: To accommodate clients currently not able to view PG Calc webinars in a group, all registrants will receive a link to a recording of the webinar that they can share with colleagues at their organization. Ordinarily, the recording is available within 1-2 weeks of the live session. Alternatively, additional participants at the same organization who wish to attend the live session may do so for just $25 each.

Taxation Basics for Fundraisers

Presented by
Craig Wruck

Thursday,
August 26, 2021
1:00 - 2:30 pm ET

UPCOMING TRAINING

PGM Anywhere and Charitable Remainder Trusts

September 8-9, ONLINE (4 hours over 2 days)

PGM to PGM Anywhere FREE

September 16, ONLINE (90 Minutes)

GiftWrap Fundamentals

September 22-23, ONLINE (6 hours over 2 days)

Lead Trust School

September 29-30, ONLINE (6 hours over 2 days)

Quick Tip: Optimizing a Gift Annuity Rate in PGM Anywhere

Among the several optimizer features included in the upcoming release of PGM Anywhere (see details about the release below) is one that reduces the entered gift annuity rate, as necessary, so that the charitable value of the gift annuity is just over 10% of the funding amount. Without this reduction in the rate, the gift annuity would not qualify because its charitable value would be too low. If your charity follows the ACGA rates, this situation should rarely, if ever, come up, but if your charity offers rates higher than the ACGA rate, it may come up regularly.

To see this optimizer feature in action:

Open Gift Options and select a Gift Annuity.
Enter an annuity rate of 20%.
Set “Reduce annuity rate, if needed, to meet 10% deduction requirement” to Yes. This is the default setting.
Enter the rest of your information.
Click Results. A message will appear that alerts you to the annuity rate having been adjusted. Likewise, text indicating the annuity rate has been adjusted will appear on all relevant presentations.

This feature is also available for deferred gift annuities and flexible gift annuities.

Please contact Client Services at 888-474-2252 or support@pgcalc.com if you have any questions.

Chocolate-Covered Surprise Cookies - image courtesy of Land-O-Lakes

From the PG Calc Blog: The Deferred Gift Annuity Surprise

I found a recipe for Cherry Surprise Cookies. The surprise is a nugget of chocolate inside the cookies. Like these delicious-sounding cookies, deferred gift annuities can come with a surprise. The surprise can be pleasant like chocolate or dreadful, as in losing lots of money.

Read the blog post...

**New PGM Anywhere Release Adds Optimizer Features**

We expect to release our latest version of PGM Anywhere within the next few days. This new release of our online gift illustration software includes all the optimizer features available in our Planned Giving Manager desktop software (PGM). These optimizers include reducing the annuity rate, when necessary, so the deduction for a gift annuity is just over the 10% deduction requirement, and setting the annuity rate of a charitable remainder annuity trust so that it just passes the 10% deduction requirement and 5% probability of exhaustion test. PGM Anywhere users can read about all the changes in the new release by clicking the release notes link on the login screen and then clicking the first release notes link in the list.

If you are a PGM client and have not made the switch to PGM Anywhere yet, don’t delay any longer. We plan to retire PGM at the end of the year. There are still some advanced features not yet available in PGM Anywhere, so keep PGM available for now in case you need to do one of those calculations.

We offer regular online training sessions on PGM Anywhere, including a FREE class on making the transition from PGM to PGM Anywhere.

As always, our Client Services team is eager to help you take advantage of PGM Anywhere’s new features and to make the transition to PGM Anywhere. You can reach us at support@pgcalc.com or call 888-474-2252.

**PG Calc Offers New NY Rate Calcs Service to Compute Maximum NY Rates for Two-Life and Deferred Annuities**

PG Calc is pleased to offer a new NY Rate Calcs service that addresses a difficult challenge faced by charities that want to issue a two-life or deferred gift annuity to a New York donor. The challenge is that the maximum annuity rates allowed by New York are lower than the suggested maximum rates published by the American Council on Gift Annuities for many annuitant ages, and New York publishes only its maximum one-life rates. The charity is on its own to determine the maximum two-life or deferred annuity rate it can offer a New York donor. Until now, that has likely required paying an actuary hundreds of dollars to figure it out. Not anymore!

If you are working with a New York donor who wishes to fund a two-life gift annuity, contact us. We will determine the maximum annuity rate you can offer your donor. We expect to be able to determine maximum deferred gift annuity rates for New York donors soon, as well.

Go to www.pgcalc.com to learn more about our service or to submit a calculation request form.

Learn About PG Calc's NY Rate Calcs Service

From the Blog: Beware Dramatic Increases in Estimated Gift Annuity Liabilities

[NOTE: The following is based on a true story.]

Some of the numbers just didn’t make sense. It was that most wonderful time of the year for a non-profit organization – the closing of the June 30 fiscal year! Almost like Christmas in July, everyone was busy reviewing tally sheets and running various reports in an effort to provide comprehensive information about the gifts received over the previous 12 months. With outright gifts, of course, the process was fairly straightforward – whatever was received, for the most part, was counted with a few exceptions. With life income gifts, however, the process was a little more complicated, since the organization needs to report the total funding amount, the estimated liability, and the estimate of the charitable remainder.

Read the blog post...

CGP Is Virtual and In-Person This Fall

The National Association of Charitable Gift Planners is offering us a flexible approach to their conference this fall, hosting both an in-person experience in Orlando, Florida October 4-6 and a virtual experience September 20-24. Both offer a robust lineup of expert speakers, educational sessions, and opportunities to socialize and network. While PG Calc still has a company travel restriction in place, we can’t wait to see you at the virtual experience.

PG Calc Returns to Our Cambridge Offices

As we continue to track the Delta variant of COVID-19, the PG Calc team is still targeting a return to our offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts after Labor Day. Our technology team has worked hard to ensure we’ve all been able to work from home during the pandemic without missing a beat, and we’ve been prepping our offices with additional equipment to allow our employees the flexibility to keep their home office setups while having everything in place for a return to our offices and the in-person collaboration we’ve missed so much. We’re pleased to be able to offer our team the flexibility of working in person as well as from home some of the time without any disruption to the quality service you’ve come to expect from PG Calc.

**Environmental Defense Fund on PGM Anywhere and PG Calc Support**

“I can’t imagine being a planned giving officer without being able to use PGM Anywhere. The flexibility, ease, and accuracy of the software combined with the information we are able to include in the illustrations is invaluable to my work. Most importantly, though, knowing that I can call PG Calc technical support anytime I have a question has made me a more knowledgeable and informed professional. No matter how small or big my questions are, every time I call -whether it is Winston, Tina, Jeffrey, or Bill who talks to me - they take the time to walk me through the pros and cons of each different scenario and what they mean to the donor. Thank you for being there for me!”

Monica Krieger, CSPG
Planned Giving Officer
Environmental Defense Fund

Learn more about the Environmental Defense Fund.

Learn more about PGM Anywhere and our amazing Client Services Team.

PG Calc 129 Mount Auburn Street Cambridge MA United States

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