One Big Beautiful Bill Act – The More Things Change…
On July 4th, President Trump signed into law HR 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB). While technically a tax bill, the OBBB implements significant elements of the President’s second-term agenda including making permanent most of his 2017 tax cuts, which were set to expire at the end of 2025. Although the financial and tax impact on donors will vary, there is little in the OBBB that directly affects charitable gift planning, and the bill does not include many legislative priorities championed by the charitable sector.
Here is a summary of a few key individual taxpayer provisions of the OBBB along with some observations about the impact they could have on your work with donors.
You're in the Will! Now What? Strategies That Lead to Larger Legacy and Lifetime Gifts
Getting new legacy pledgers or legacy society members is great. But the data show that a “count it and forget it” approach won’t work. So, what comes next? In this session, we’ll look at practical strategies that help to keep the gift plans in place. Next, we’ll see how to make the gifts dramatically larger. Finally, we’ll explore how to convert these legacy plans into lifetime gifts. Experimental research results and real-world practice point the way to a new source of fundraising success.
July 22 FREE Webinar – What the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Could Mean for Gift Planning
Quick Tip: Fill Your Free Tech Role in PGM Anywhere
From the Blog: BDQ #10: Retained Life Estates – Who Says You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too?
PGM Anywhere Technology and Accessibility Upgraded
Foundation Source Celebrates 25 Years and Welcomes Pacific Foundation Services to the Foundation Source Family
Cake and Turkey: Stewarding Donors on Birthdays and Thanksgivings
Join Us for Advanced Gift Planning Training in Indianapolis
Rob Danzig Can Count on PG Calc’s Planned Giving Expertise
July 22 FREE Webinar – What the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Could Mean for Gift Planning
On July 4th, President Trump signed H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sweeping new tax law. The new law includes a variety of changes that may have implications for gift planning and fundraising in general.
Please join us on Tuesday, July 22nd for a FREE webinar in which PG Calc Consultants Jeff Lydenberg and Craig Wruck will explain the provisions of the new tax law that might affect charitable giving. In addition to presenting the details of these changes, they will provide context for understanding how these changes are likely to influence donor behavior. You will leave the webinar better-prepared to answer your donors’ questions about the new tax law and better-equipped to promote planned gifts effectively going forward.
When: Tuesday, July 22nd, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm ET
Presenters: Jeff Lydenberg, Vice President, Consulting and Craig Wruck, Senior Advisor
Quick Tip: Fill Your Free Tech Role in PGM Anywhere
Heading out on vacation? In addition to setting your out of office email, if you are the primary administrator for PGM Anywhere, make sure someone else is empowered to unlock other user’s accounts. The easiest way to do this is to assign someone to the Tech role.
The Tech role is limited to being able to unlock accounts and reset passwords, they cannot access the core functions of the software. The person in this role could be on the gift planning team or a member of your IT staff. The Tech role is free and does not count towards your total licenses.
To add someone to the Tech role, follow these steps:
Click Users in the top right of your screen.
Choose User Management in the left navigation bar.
Click the green plus sign below the list of users.
Enter the information for the new user account and assign them to the Tech role.
Click Save when finished. This will send an email to the new user with their login credentials, including a temporary password.
A truly relaxing vacation is one that is not interrupted by a panicky phone call from a colleague who has locked themselves out of PGM Anywhere, so remember to inform your colleagues who holds the Tech role so they know who can assist them while you are away.
Contact Client Services at support@pgcalc.com or at 888-474-2252 if you need help.
From the Blog: BDQ #10: Retained Life Estates – Who Says You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too?
No doubt you, as a gift planner, know why a gift of appreciated property is more advantageous than a gift of cash. You’ve even said something like, “Cash is the worst thing you can give. Don’t you have anything that’s worth more than you paid for it?”
For many donors, their home is one of the most highly appreciated assets they will ever own. But there’s a rub: their home is also highly useful as a personal residence and, if they give it away, they’ll have to find another place to live. So, donors aren’t encouraged to think of their home as a potential contribution.
But what if there was a way for your donor to give their personal residence now and continue to live there and enjoy it for the rest of their lives? Enter the redoubtable but often overlooked Retained Life Estate.
PGM Anywhere Technology and Accessibility Upgraded
On June 24, we announced our latest release of PGM Anywhere, our online gift planning software. This update includes improved accessibility, technology upgrades, and bug fixes. For full details on these improvements, click the “Release Notes” link on the PGM Anywhere login screen.
Foundation Source Celebrates 25 Years and Welcomes Pacific Foundation Services to the Foundation Source Family
On June 25, PG Calc’s parent company, Foundation Source, celebrated its 25th anniversary with a party in Fairfield, Connecticut. There was additional reason to celebrate, however, as it was announced that Foundation Source acquired Pacific Foundation Services (PFS), a foundation management organization based in San Francisco providing philanthropic strategy, grants management, and enhanced accounting support to some of the Bay Area’s largest foundations. The transaction reinforces Foundation Source’s position as the nation’s premier provider of foundation management and increases its charitable assets under administration to nearly $40 billion. It also boosts annual deployment of charitable funds to more than $2.7 billion. Learn more about the PFS acquisition.
Pictured above (L-R) are Gary Pforzheimer, President, Planned Giving at Foundation Source (a.k.a. PG Calc); Ashby Foltz, who co-founded Vennfi, the technology powering the donor-advised fund Charityvest, and is now Foundation Source's Senior Vice President of Product; and Charlie Casey, formerly the CEO of Pacific Foundation Services and now President of Premier Foundation Services at Foundation Source.
Cake and Turkey: Stewarding Donors on Birthdays and Thanksgiving
Many of our clients send their legacy donors – those who have established life income gifts and those who have made bequest intentions – a birthday card as part of their stewardship. A physical card in the postal mail is a sign of friendship, and as a stewardship piece, birthday cards are both cost effective and easy to personalize. If you have charitable gift annuity donors, a birthday card can also remind them that (in addition to growth in wisdom), their new birthday offers them a higher annuity rate.
If you like the idea of connecting via the postal mail, but the rolling marketing deadline of donor birthdays is not feasible for your staff, consider the benefits of a Thanksgiving card. Timed to arrive in early November, a Thanksgiving card is an organic opportunity to thank your donors for their ongoing commitment to your organization during the season of gratitude.
A Thanksgiving card doesn’t have to stick to autumnal images – it’s actually a great time to include a photo of your development staff. As people, we gravitate to images of faces, and showcasing your staff can ground your donor’s connection to you in two ways: it reminds them that real people are working on the causes they care about, and that there’s a specific team that they’re connected to and who will be reaching out to them. Anecdotally, I have heard from clients that donors sometimes carry these cards with them to their events and use them to pick fundraisers out of a crowd. Even if you don’t include your staff in the image, consider having your entire team sign the card.
Particularly with bequest donors, who don’t have regular quarterly payments connecting them to your organization, birthday and Thanksgiving cards can be your first alert that a donor has moved or even died. Cards are more likely to be marked “return to sender” than a marketing piece, making these cards an important indicator of donor health.
Here are some general guidelines.
Plan in advance. If you decide to send birthday cards, you can use GiftWrap’s Person Summary report to pull all donors with birthdays in the upcoming month. Thanksgiving card designs should be selected by the first week of October for a November 1 drop.
Use a stamp. While you may meter the rest of your marketing and stewardship pieces, a birthday card is warmest when it is sent with a stamp, as it conveys it was personally sent with care.
Personalize when possible. If you have donors who are “missing” and haven’t responded to emails or marketing pieces, add a handwritten note to their card. Also, add your name above your organization’s return address by hand.
Make your own holiday. If you consider birthdays too personal, but you worry Thanksgiving cards will get lost in an onslaught of Christmas catalogues, consider sending legacy donors a card to celebrate your organization’s founding. Invite them to share in your organization’s “birthday” and credit them with helping to get your organization to this new milestone.
Join Us for Advanced Gift Planning Training in Indianapolis
Ever stumbled over the difference between a grantor and non-grantor lead trust in a donor meeting, or wondered what can make the former “super?” Do you understand what can change when a gift annuity or remainder trust are funded via an estate, and how to model those changes? If so, please join us prior to the Charitable Gift Planners conference in Indianapolis:
This full-day seminar will use PGM Anywhere as our laboratory, and attendees will learn how to model advanced gift planning techniques including retained life estates, charitable lead trusts and testamentary gift plans. Learn more or register here: www.pgcalc.com/insight-education/software-training.
Rob Danzig Can Count on PG Calc’s Planned Giving Expertise
“PG Calc has been a trusted resource throughout my professional career in philanthropy, banking and now back in philanthropy. My work with Gary Pforzheimer, Bill Laskin, Winston Jones, Jeffrey Frye, Lindsey Simrell, Andrea Yelle and the entire team has been outstanding. Whether it be a complicated gift illustration, or figuring out a customized gift annuity mailing, or answering a straightforward question for a second opinion, the PG Calc team is thorough, trusted, and always looking out for their client base. Their client service is the best in the philanthropic community.”
Robert M. Danzig, CFP, CAP Director of Planned Giving Pratt Institute
