---
name: planned_giving
description: "Run a planned giving program honestly for a small or mid size charity: explain bequests, beneficiary designations, IRA qualified charitable distributions, gift annuities, charitable remainder and lead trusts, donor-advised fund succession, and life insurance in plain language, hold donor conversations that never pressure, document and steward pledged gifts with a working pledge tracker, and refer anything complex to the donor own qualified advisors. Use when someone asks about planned giving, legacy gifts, bequests, gifts in a will, gift annuities, charitable remainder trusts, QCDs, leaving a charity in an estate plan, starting a legacy society, or tracking planned gift intentions."
---

# Planned Giving

## Purpose

Planned giving is the set of gifts a donor arranges now that mostly arrive later: a bequest, a beneficiary form, a life income gift, a trust remainder. The money is slow and the trust required is high, because the donor is putting the charity inside their estate plan, next to family. A program that earns that place honestly will outlast any campaign. A program that pressures an older donor, overstates a tax benefit, or counts a revocable intention as revenue will lose it, and should.

This skill is teaching first. It explains each vehicle in plain language in `references/gift-types.md`, gives conversation guides with hard stops in `references/conversation-guides.md`, sets three worked program plans for small organisations in `references/program-plans.md`, and ships a pledge tracker in `bin/pledge_tracker.py` that keeps intentions, documentation, and stewardship dates in one auditable sheet.

The ethical frame is the Model Standards of Practice for the Charitable Gift Planner, adopted by the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners and the American Council on Gift Annuities: philanthropic motivation comes first, the donor receives a full and accurate description of any proposed gift, and the gift planner strongly encourages the donor to discuss the gift with independent legal and tax advisors of the donor own choice. That frame is not decoration. It is the operating system for every step below.

Scope note: tax and trust figures here are US rules, verified against IRS sources in October 2026. Tax law and indexed limits change. Confirm current figures before quoting them, and treat every other country as a separate research job.

## Workflow

### 1. Set the guardrails before any donor hears about the program

- Get a written gift acceptance policy adopted by the board before marketing anything. It states which gift types and assets the charity accepts, who approves noncash and restricted gifts, and which gifts it will decline or refer out. The checklist of policies a program needs is in `references/program-plans.md`.
- Adopt a counting rule in the same motion: planned gift intentions are reported in their own pipeline, by stage, and are never added to annual fund, campaign, or revenue totals. A revocable bequest intention is not an asset.
- Decide the offer honestly from capacity. A small organisation with no trained staff and no administration partner offers bequests, beneficiary designations, and QCD information. It does not issue gift annuities or act as trustee. The three plan sizes in `references/program-plans.md` draw these lines.
- Put the referral line in writing everywhere: staff explain how gifts to the charity work, staff are not the donor advisor, and donors are strongly encouraged to use their own attorney and tax advisor before deciding. No template, illustration, or letter goes out without it where a specific gift is discussed.

### 2. Learn the gift types well enough to teach them

Work through `references/gift-types.md` until each vehicle can be explained in under a minute with its trade off included. The core set:

- Bequest: specific, general, percentage, residuary, or contingent. Revocable, no current tax deduction, arrives at death through probate or a trust.
- Beneficiary designation: a form at the account holder controls retirement accounts, life insurance, and financial accounts. Often the simplest planned gift a donor will ever make.
- Qualified charitable distribution: a current gift from an IRA for donors age 70 and a half or older, paid directly to the charity, excluded from taxable income up to 108,000 dollars per person in 2025 and 111,000 dollars in 2026, and able to count toward a required minimum distribution. Donor-advised funds and private foundations cannot receive one.
- Charitable gift annuity: a contract paying fixed amounts for one or two lives, with the remainder to the charity. Irrevocable, state regulated in many states, backed by the charity general assets.
- Charitable remainder trust: irrevocable, pays income for life or a term of up to 20 years, remainder to charity. Payout between 5 and 50 percent, and the charity remainder must be worth at least 10 percent of the assets put in, per Internal Revenue Code section 664 and the IRS charitable remainder trusts page.
- Charitable lead trust: the reverse order, charity paid first for a term, remainder to family or the donor. Specialist territory.
- Donor-advised fund succession: naming a charity as fund beneficiary or naming successor advisors, with the rule that no fund grant may give the donor or a related person more than an incidental benefit.
- Life insurance and real estate: possible, policy gated, and never promised before an acceptance review.

If a question goes past plain mechanics into tax effect, drafting, or suitability for a named donor, that is the referral line. Stop there and refer.

### 3. Find the right donors without targeting vulnerability

- Build the outreach list from loyalty signals already in the donor file: length of giving history, consistency, volunteering, event involvement, and prior interest in long term support. Loyalty is the signal. Age alone is a weak and lazy proxy, and wealth screening data bought without a data policy is a governance problem, not a shortcut.
- Never build outreach around bereavement, illness, cognitive decline, a recent spouse death, or any sign a donor may be vulnerable. A donor in one of those states who raises planned giving themselves gets extra care, an advisor referral, and a slower pace, not a faster close.
- Offer information broadly as well as personally: a clear website page with legal name and tax ID, educational mailings, and a standing offer to talk. Broad education reaches the donors a list would miss and keeps the program visibly pressure free.

### 4. Hold the conversation

Follow `references/conversation-guides.md`. The non negotiable shape:

- Start with values and family order, not vehicles. Offer at most two fitting options, each with its trade off stated in the same breath as its benefit.
- State your role and the referral line out loud in every substantive conversation.
- Name revocability where it exists. Bequests and beneficiary forms can be changed. Donors trust a program that tells them this without being asked.
- Set no deadline, quote no expiring rate, and make no tax, return, or remainder promise. Illustrations carry written assumptions and the referral line.
- Observe the hard stops in the guide: confusion or capacity doubt, a gift that would strain the donor own security, a request to draft documents or act against a spouse or family, or any fee or commission tied to the gift. Pause or end the conversation, document factually, and involve leadership where the guide says to.

### 5. Document the intention properly

When a donor states or completes a planned gift, record it the same week:

```bash
python3 bin/pledge_tracker.py init pledges.csv
python3 bin/pledge_tracker.py add pledges.csv --donor "Donor Name" --type bequest_residuary --status documented --date 2026-10-20 --documentation "Copy of will clause on file" --next-touch 2027-04-20 --advisor-referred yes --notes "Residuary share, unrestricted, recognition declined"
```

- Record gift type, stage, date, any purpose restriction in the donor words, recognition preference, and whether documentation was shared. Amount is optional and is recorded only when the donor volunteers it. Never estimate a donor gift size for them in the record.
- Stages mean specific things. Conversation: the topic was discussed. Intention stated: the donor says they have acted or will act, with nothing seen. Documented: the charity holds evidence, such as a will clause copy, a designation confirmation, or a signed annuity or trust document. Realised: funds received. Closed: intention withdrawn, donor deceased with no gift, or gift completed and moved to gift records.
- Ask once, and only once, whether the donor is willing to share the relevant clause or confirmation so the charity can record the intention correctly and honour any restriction. A no is final.
- Check any restriction internally before confirming it back to the donor. If the charity cannot carry out a stated purpose, say so while the donor can still adjust their document. Confirming an impossible restriction in writing is one of the worst errors in this field.
- Store intention records as confidential. Access is limited to staff who steward the gift. A donor intention never appears in a public report with identifying detail without written recognition consent.
- Send the donor a short confirmation letter restating what was recorded, including their recognition preference and any restriction, with no new ask in it.

### 6. Handle the paperwork that carries legal weight

- Acknowledgments: for a single contribution of 250 dollars or more, IRS rules require a contemporaneous written acknowledgment stating the amount of cash or a description of noncash property, and whether the charity provided any goods or services in return, with a description and good faith estimate if it did. Use counsel approved templates. Do not improvise this wording.
- Noncash gifts: a donor claiming over 500 dollars files Form 8283 Section A. For an item or group of similar items over 5,000 dollars, the donor needs a qualified appraisal and Form 8283 Section B, signed by the appraiser and the charity. Publicly traded securities are generally exempt from the appraisal requirement. The charity signs as receiver of the property, not as a judge of its value, and never states a value for donated property in its own acknowledgment.
- Gift annuities and trusts: only signed documents drafted or reviewed by qualified counsel create these gifts. Staff do not draft, do not hold originals that belong with the donor advisor unless policy says to, and file the charity copy with the gift record.
- Beneficiary claims and estates: log every estate and designation claim on receipt, route documents to the officer or counsel named in policy, and track expected versus received amounts separately from the intention pipeline.

### 7. Steward pledged gifts for the long term

Planned gifts are stewarded for years, often decades. The program that forgets a documented donor will eventually be written out of a plan that gets revised.

- Thank within 48 hours of learning of a documented intention, personally, with no ask attached.
- Set a next touch date for every active record and work the due list monthly:

```bash
python3 bin/pledge_tracker.py due pledges.csv
python3 bin/pledge_tracker.py report pledges.csv
```

- Give documented donors a distinct stewardship track: an impact report written for a long horizon at least once a year, early word on major changes that affect their stated purpose, an invitation with no ask at least once a year, and a named staff contact who answers as a person.
- Recognition follows the donor stated preference exactly. Anonymous means anonymous in every list, report, and event script. Ask before any public naming, every time the context changes.
- Reconfirm gently over time. Every few years, a stewardship touch can ask whether their recorded purpose and recognition preference still match their wishes, and whether contact details have changed. This protects the donor intent, because purposes recorded 20 years ago are the ones charities most often get wrong.
- When a gift is realised, thank any family contact appropriately where the donor wished it, report the realised gift in gift records, and close the intention record with the outcome noted.

### 8. Report and review like an adult

- Report the pipeline by stage to leadership on a fixed cadence, using the tracker report. Face value of estimates and the weighted planning figure are both labelled in the tool as planning aids. Neither is presented as expected revenue, in any document, ever.
- Review realised gifts over rolling multi year windows. Single year bequest income swings wildly with chance and proves nothing.
- Audit yearly: a sample of acknowledgment letters against IRS wording, a sample of intention records against their documentation, annuity and trust administration current if offered, and every hard stop incident from the year reviewed for what it teaches.
- Fix one weakness per quarter: documentation share, overdue stewardship touches, slow inquiry response, or restriction checks. Small programs improve by sequence, not by overhaul.

## Output Contract

A planned giving job done with this skill produces some or all of:

- A plain language explanation of one or more gift types, matched to the donor stated problem, with trade offs and the advisor referral line included.
- A conversation plan or script following the guides, with hard stops noted for the specific situation.
- A completed intention record in the pledge tracker, with stage, documentation status, restriction in the donor words, recognition preference, and a next touch date.
- A donor confirmation letter restating what was recorded, with no ask in it.
- A stewardship due list and a pipeline report by stage, with estimates labelled as planning aids only.
- A program plan sized to the organisation, chosen from the three plans, with policies, workload, and measures stated.

## Operating Rules

- Never give tax, legal, or financial advice. Explain general mechanics from verified sources, state that individual results depend on the donor full situation, and refer the donor to independent advisors of their own choice. This rule has no exceptions for helpfulness.
- Never pressure. No deadlines, no repeated asks after a no or a silence, no urgency built on age, health, or world events, and no guilt framing. One clear offer, then stewardship.
- Never promise a tax saving figure, an investment return, a specific remainder for charity or heirs, or that a purpose can be delivered, before the internal check that proves the charity can deliver it.
- Never count a revocable intention as revenue, an asset, or a campaign total. Report stages separately, always.
- Never accept a finders fee, commission, or any payment as a condition of a gift, and never pay one. The Model Standards call this never appropriate.
- Confidentiality is absolute. Intentions, amounts, family details, and estate information stay inside the need to know circle, and anonymity preferences override every recognition habit.
- Capacity concerns stop the work. If a donor may not understand what they are signing, pause, involve their advisor or family as appropriate, document factually, and let leadership decide whether the charity can accept the gift.
- Verify every figure before it leaves the building. Indexed limits such as the QCD cap, rate schedules such as gift annuity rates, and thresholds such as appraisal rules all change. Quote the IRS at https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-remainder-trusts and IRS Publication 526 at https://www.irs.gov/publications/p526 for current US rules, the American Council on Gift Annuities for current annuity rates, and the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners standards at https://charitablegiftplanners.org/standards-expanding-beyond-bequests for program practice.
- Keep donor records factual. Observations about capacity, family conflict, or pressure concerns are written as facts with dates, never as character judgments.