Planned giving professionals often spend time with the wealthiest of donors, those for whom the tax aspects of their giving is frequently a significant driver. For these conversations, the technical details and legal aspects of charitable gift vehicles, such as charitable remainder trusts, can be an essential element in the pursuit of an optimum gift. However, it is important to consider what drives the majority of donors who make up the lion’s share of planned gifts. Charitable bequests continue to be a huge source of giving, even though they don’t afford tax benefits for most donors.
The democratization of charitable gift planning – ensuring the tools of charitable gift planning are accessible to all, not just a few – can take many forms, some familiar and some newer. Understanding and appreciating these concepts and trends is critical for today’s planned giving officer.
Quick Tip: Security Features You Forgot You Have in PGM Anywhere
From the Blog:
Talking to Your Donors about the OBBBA Changes – Turning Tax Changes into Gift Opportunities
New Jersey Is Inflexible on Flexible Gift Annuities
Knowledge Base: The Basics of Basis
Hooray, It’s 1099 Season Again!
New York Maximum Annuity Rates Lower for January - June 2026
Time to Update Your PIF Valuation Rate for 2026
Remember: PIF and CRT K-1s Are NOT Due in January
Gift Planners Recommend PG Calc Content to Their Colleagues
PG Calc FREE Webinar Endowment Building Q&A
A healthy endowment empowers a nonprofit to invest in its future and enhance its mission. It provides the financial stability that facilitates long term planning. It enables a charity to fully pursue its work in good times and bad. In this webinar, Gary Pforzheimer will review the five keystones to building a robust endowment, then open it up for all your endowment-related questions.
How will you stay on top of planned giving trends and developments in 2026? How will you train your staff and colleagues on the art and techniques of gift planning? Each month in 2026, PG Calc’s webinar series will bring you the latest thinking on a wide range of gift planning topics from PG Calc experts and thought leaders such as Russell James, Andrew Fussner, Ericka Webb, and Alasdair Halliday.
Quick Tip: Security Features You Forgot You Have in PGM Anywhere
Cyber criminals never take a day off, so it’s important to be aware of the security features available to you within PGM Anywhere and make effective policy decisions on how best to use them. There are two sets of security features in PGM Anywhere that users can take advantage of. One set is established by your organization’s primary administrator. The second set can be implemented for you by PG Calc at a system level.
Here are the security choices your organization’s primary administrator can enable for you by going to Users and then Security.
How frequently a password must be changed and the number of days before an old password can be reused
The number of failed login attempts before a user’s account locks
The number of inactive days since the last login before a user’s account locks
The number of hours until a temporary password expires when a user’s account is unlocked
The ability for the client nickname to prepopulate on the login screen
The ability to export annuitant dates of birth to GiftWrap
The ability to export Social Security numbers to GiftWrap
There are additional security features that you can request PG Calc to implement for you. These include:
Blocking the ability to save cases in PGM Anywhere’s database
Blocking the ability to email presentations directly from PGM Anywhere
Blocking the export of files from PGM Anywhere, including as Word and Excel documents
Blocking the ability to enter Social Security numbers
Applying more stringent rules when setting new user passwords
For an additional fee, PG Calc can implement any of these enhanced security features:
Single sign-on
Two-factor authentication
IP filtering
Implementation of single sign-on requires close collaboration between your IT staff and PG Calc. To learn more about these options, please reach out to Client Services at support@pgcalc.com.
From the Blog: Talking to Your Donors about the OBBBA Changes – Turning Tax Changes into Gift Opportunities
As we approach tax season, many of your donors may be confused when they hear whispers about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and how it might impact their charitable giving. While tax law shifts can feel daunting, these changes aren’t reasons for your donors to stop giving. In fact, a door has opened to engage donors in conversations about how to give more strategically … and give more.
New Jersey is requiring actuarial verification of state reserve reports as part of a charity’s gift annuity annual reporting if the charity offers flexible gift annuities (FGAs). If your charity has a pending application, you will need to add an actuarial verification of your New Jersey reserve calculations if you offer FGAs. Charities that are already registered in New Jersey will need actuarial verification of their state reserve report as part of their annual filings if they offer FGAs.
Knowledge Base: The Basics of Basis
Basis is used to determine capital gain on the transfer of appreciated assets, such as stock or real estate. Donors should provide the basis of appreciated assets used to fund life income gifts such as charitable gift annuities. The basis and the fair market value of the gift will determine the tax-free income, ordinary income, and capital gain income portions of the gift annuity payments.
We wanted to remind everyone that January is the month during which federal Form 1099-Rs must be sent to all persons who received payments from charitable gift annuities in the previous calendar year. If you are not involved in the gift administration side of planned giving, you likely are not involved in the production and mailing of the tax forms. But everyone should be aware that the forms must be sent to the annuitants by U.S. Mail by January 31 at the latest.
And the fun isn’t over on February 1. After the forms have been mailed, charities offering CGAs will receive the inevitable return-to-sender items for incorrect addresses. There will also be the occasional notification that an annuitant has passed away. But there is plenty of time – most charities have until March 31 to submit the 1099-R information to the IRS. That part of the process should not be rushed, so as to allow for the corrections that will need to be made in the interim.
If you are a user of PG Calc’s GiftWrap software, you can watch the free recording of our session on how to complete your 1099-Rs. Go to minute 4:30 in the recording to skip to the beginning of the session.
New York Maximum Annuity Rates Lower for January - June 2026
On January 1, New York published updated single life maximum annuity rates that apply to gift annuities issued to New York residents from January 1, 2026 through June 30, 2026. Although New York has reduced the interest rate for determining its maximum rates from 6.25% to 6.00%, New York’s maximum one-life immediate annuity rates remain substantially higher than their corresponding ACGA rates at all ages. The same is true for all two-life immediate annuity rates, one-life deferred annuity rates, and most two-life deferred annuity rates we have tested.
We do find the New York maximum rate for an annuity with a 15-year deferral and two 70-year-old female annuitants is less than 0.2% higher than the ACGA rate. It is not practical for us to test all possible two-life and deferral period combinations, so if you have a New York donor who is considering a deferred annuity for two female annuitants who are 65-75 and that will defer payments more than five years, you would be wise to confirm the ACGA rate is lower than the New York maximum rate. Contact support@pgcalc.com for help with this determination.
In general, charities can continue to offer ACGA rates to gift annuity and deferred gift annuity donors in New York through June 30, 2026, confident that they will not be exceeding New York’s limits on gift annuity rates.
Time to Update Your PIF Valuation Rate for 2026
The charitable deduction available to a donor to a pooled income fund is determined using the fund’s valuation rate. The lower the valuation rate, the higher the deduction.
Last month, we shared the valuation rate for gifts in 2026 to pooled income funds that are less than three taxable years old (aka, “young funds”). That rate is 4.0%. Now that 2026 is here, it is time to determine the valuation rate for gifts in 2026 to pooled income funds that are three taxable years old or older (aka, “old funds”). If your organization has an old fund, keep reading.
The valuation rate for an old fund is based on the highest annual yield of the fund during the previous three tax years, determined as described in Treas. Regs. 1.642-6(c)(2) and 1.642-6(c)(3). You can update this rate in PGM Anywhere under Customize > Pooled Funds > Edit > Highest return of last 3 years.
As a practical matter, a fund’s investment information for 2025 may not be available until February or March of this year. If that is the case with your organization’s pooled income fund, you can’t know what 2026’s valuation rate for the fund will be until after that. Your fund can accept new gifts before then; you just won’t be able to tell the donor their exact deduction until after the fund’s valuation rate for 2026 has been determined.
You can reach us at support@pgcalc.com or 888-474-2252 if you have questions.
Remember: PIF and CRT K-1s Are NOT Due in January
Most everyone knows that Form 1099-Rs for charitable gift annuities are due in January – they must be sent by January 31 of each year (see the article on 1099s above). But some gift annuity donors are also donors of charitable remainder trusts (CRTs) or participants of pooled income funds (PIFs). It is worth noting that the deadline for sending CRT and PIF Form K-1s is NOT January 31. The deadline is actually the filing deadline for the completed tax returns of the CRTs and PIFs. That filing deadline is April 15 or the first business day thereafter.
Unlike Form 1099-R, which is unique and specific to each gift annuity, the CRT and PIF Form K-1s are actually part of the overall tax returns for the associated trusts. They cannot be produced until the tax returns themselves are essentially completed. While April 15 is technically the deadline, most CRT and PIF administrators try to send out the K-1s much earlier. We generally see the majority of the K-1s going out sometime in March, but it may be helpful to remind donors of the actual filing deadline.
Gift Planners Recommend PG Calc Content to Their Colleagues
Ed Cable, Director of Planned Giving at Mount Vernon Nazarene University and longstanding PG Calc client, recently posted a message on CGP Link that asked the gift planning community to suggest their top ten posts, articles, and books on gift planning. We were thrilled to be included in Ed’s final compilation three different ways:
Planned Giving in a Nutshell, by Craig Wruck (PG Calc Senior Advisor).
Charitable Gift Annuities, The Complete Resource Manual – Frank Minton, from PG Calc. (Its new name is CGA Manual: The Complete Guide to Gift Annuities and includes contributions from PG Calc Director, Gift Annuity Compliance Edie Matulka and Craig Wruck.)
We work hard to help our clients and the wider gift planning community with timely, accurate, practical information. Thank you for the recognition!
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