Decoding the OBBBA – A Fundraiser’s Field Guide to the New Tax Landscape
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) reshapes many aspects of tax planning. How these changes will affect donor behavior remains to be seen. For fundraisers, understanding the key changes – when they start, when they end, and how they’ll affect your donors – is critical to informing fundraising strategies and messages.
Most of the provisions of the OBBBA with significant potential impact on charitable giving take effect beginning in 2026 and, importantly, many of the charitable provisions are permanent and do not sunset. These changes provide a new, but complex, basis for charitable gift planning.
Here is a breakdown of several key provisions and their potential implications for donors . . .
Wanted, Dead or Alive: Finding Missing Beneficiaries
Your gift annuitant has stopped depositing her payments. Payments to another annuitant keep being returned as undeliverable. Are they really still alive? Missing beneficiaries is an ongoing challenge for many planned giving programs. In this webinar, Morgan Heck will draw on her 13 years of experience as a prospect researcher to share practical strategies and useful resources for finding beneficiaries and donors who have gone missing. PG Calc’s Kara Morin will present Morgan with common missing person cases and offer advice on what to do if a person simply can’t be found.
Quick Tip: Creating a Commuted Gift Annuity Proposal in PGM Anywhere
From the Blog: Alternative Endings – Early Terminations of Split-Interest Gifts
Shutdown Doesn’t Mean Stop
Free Webinar Recording: DAF Day 2025 – Unlock the Power of DAF Fundraising
PGM Anywhere Release Adds Commuted Payment Gift Annuities
Leverage BatchCalcs in Your Year-End CGA Appeals
New Name and Revised Text: CGA Manual Update Imminent
2026 Webinars Coming Together, 2026 Software Training Schedule Coming Soon
Say Hello to Our Team at the CGP Conference
Quick Tip: Creating a Commuted Gift Annuity Proposal in PGM Anywhere
Our most recent upgrade of PGM Anywhere, released in late September, added commuted payment gift annuities to the list of gift options it can illustrate. Briefly, a commuted payment gift annuity is a deferred gift annuity that gives the annuitant the option to commute the lifetime of payments to a fixed number of payments of equivalent value. Commuted payment gift annuities typically are used to assist a grandchild or other young person with making college tuition payments down the road or to bridge the gap between retiring and starting to take required minimum distributions from a retirement plan. Here’s how you illustrate a commuted payment gift annuity in PGM Anywhere:
Open Date-Lives-Term to enter the gift date, IRS discount rate, and birth date of the annuitant.
Open Gift Options and select Commuted Gift Annuity under Add a Gift Option. A follow-up window will open.
Answer all the questions in the follow-up window. Pay special attention to Years for commuted payments, Term for commuted payments, and Ask for amount of commuted payment. We’ve set the default values for these questions to ones we think are most likely correct, but you should change them, as needed, to match your case.
Open Presentations and select the presentations you usually select for a gift annuity.
Note: You can also get a head start on a commuted payment gift annuity proposal by selecting the new commuted payment gift annuity template: Open > Type of case = Template > Gift Annuities > Commuted Payment Gift Annuity Proposal.
Contact Client Services at support@pgcalc.com or at 888-474-2252 if you have any questions or need help.
From the Blog: Alternative Endings – Early Terminations of Split-Interest Gifts
Split-interest gifts are legal arrangements through which individuals contribute something of value to a nonprofit organization (frequently cash, but also, marketable securities or real estate) and receive, in return, both a charitable income tax deduction and a benefit of some monetary value. The majority of split-interest gifts are so-called “life income gifts,” whereby the donors receive certain amounts of income paid back to them, generally for the rest of their lives.
The donors are making charitable gifts as portions of their split-interest gifts, and these transactions are irrevocable. The donors cannot undo the gifts – they cannot take the cash or securities or real estate back, even if they change their minds later. But are the donors of these gift vehicles locked into the legal arrangements for the rest of their lives until their death? Is there no way to “get out” of these binding contracts and agreements?
As of this writing, the U.S. government is still in a shutdown, which began on October 1, 2025. Most Federal offices and services are closed except for certain “essential services” determined by the Executive branch.
Many IRS services are unavailable or delayed during the shutdown, and there are likely to be delays as services are restored after the shutdown ends. Nevertheless, tax filing deadlines and tax payment due dates remain in force and penalties and interest still apply. Importantly, this includes the October 15 extended filing deadline for 2024 income taxes.
Free Webinar Recording: DAF Day 2025 – Unlock the Power of DAF Fundraising
Donor-advised funds (DAFs) are the fastest-growing source of charitable giving in the U.S., and they are reshaping how donors plan their philanthropy. If you’re a planned giving fundraiser, you can’t afford to overlook this powerful tool.
We celebrated DAF Day this October 9th with a free webinar: Unlock the Power of DAF Fundraising, featuring PG Calc’s Gary Pforzheimer; Stephen Kump, President of DAFs at Foundation Source; and Mitch Stein, Head of Strategy at Chariot. They shared proven strategies for maximizing DAF engagement and building sustainable giving relationships with donors. Watch the webinar recording.
PGM Anywhere Release Adds Commuted Payment Gift Annuities
On September 24, we announced our latest release of PGM Anywhere. This release adds commuted payment gift annuities to the long list of gift plans you can illustrate in PGM Anywhere. Other highlights of the release include updated QCD templates, optional enhanced password requirements, and accessibility improvements. PGM Anywhere clients can learn all the details by reading the release notes available from links on the login screen and in the title bar.
Have questions? Contact Client Services at support@pgcalc.com or 888-474-2252.
Leverage BatchCalcs in Your Year-End CGA Appeals
Now is the time to get a jump on marketing year-end CGAs to donors. Donors need time to start planning, and our BatchCalcs service allows you to provide each of your donors with a personalized, specific calculation in your appeal letters or emails to show the many benefits of a CGA. A more personal message is a more persuasive message.
Talk to us about how we can incorporate BatchCalcs into your gift annuity mailings.
New Name and Revised Text: CGA Manual Update Imminent
We expect to release our annual update of the CGA Manual: The Complete Guide to Gift Annuities to our electronic subscribers within the next week. Formerly called Charitable Gift Annuities: The Complete Resource Manual, the CGA Manual has the answers to all your gift annuity questions: state regulations, special situations, every funding asset imaginable, best practices (rewritten this year by the estimable Craig Wruck), and much more! The manual comes with 51 prototype letters and documents, and a comprehensive array of gift annuity agreements that you can adapt for use in your work.
For just $75/year, you can have the electronic CGA Manual at your fingertips and be on your way to an exceptional gift annuity program.
Learn more about the CGA Manualon our website, or contact Client Services at support@pgcalc.com or 888-474-2252 to order your copy.
2026 Webinars Coming Together, 2026 Software Training Schedule Coming Soon
We have our webinar schedule for 2026 largely filled out. The topics and presenters are listed below. We will be announcing our 2026 webinar schedule, including dates, soon.
PG Calc Webinars bring the skill and experience of the industry’s top practitioners to your home or office! Eight Webinars will include 45 minutes of formal presentation, 15 minutes of Q&A, and a PDF of the slides. Four FREE Q&A Webinars will offer 60 minutes with an expert to answer your questions on a selected gift planning topic. The four Q&A webinars will be free and the rest just $45/person. We’ll also be offering Craig Wruck’s popular four-part Fundamentals of Planned Giving.
2025 Webinar Topics:
Using Donor Surveys in Planned Gift Marketing
Russell James – Texas Tech University
Bequests Gone Bad – Ten Ways to Lose Your Charitable Bequest
Andrew Fussner – American Heart Association
The Life of a Legacy Match: Turning Inspiration Into Action
Abby Quammen and Meryl Cosentino – New York University
Successful Strategies for Closing Lead Trusts
Alasdair Halliday – Harvard University
Planned Gifts Funded with Niche Assets
Bill Laskin and Kara Morin – PG Calc
The Right Metrics for Gift Planning
Craig Wruck – PG Calc
Gifts of Real Estate Diane Thornton and Christa Lewis - The Nature Conservancy
Practical Uses of AI in Gift Planning
Ericka Webb - Boston College
Gift Annuity Regulations and Compliance Q&A (FREE)
Edie Matulka and Julie Goldenberg Hay – PG Calc
Marketing Planned Gifts Q&A (FREE)
Andrew Palmer – PG Calc
Endowment Building Q&A (FREE)
Gary Pforzheimer – PG Calc
QCDs Q&A (FREE)
PG Calc Client Services Staff
Fundamentals of Planned Giving (four weekly 90-minute sessions)
Craig Wruck – PG Calc
We have nearly finalized our PGM Anywhere and GiftWraptraining schedules for the first half of 2026. In addition to sessions on running our software, specialized sessions will include Lead Trust School, Planned Giving by the Numbers, and a free session in January on using GiftWrap to file 1099-Rs (1099-Rs will be due on January 31!). Most sessions will be delivered online. The full schedule is coming soon!
Say Hello to Our Team at the CGP Conference
Come say hello to all of us at the PG Calc Booth, #41/48 in the Solutions Center. We always enjoy catching up with clients and meeting new friends at the CGP Conference. You can learn the latest news from PG Calc and get one of our new polar bears.
PG Calc • 129 Mount Auburn Street • Cambridge • MA • 02138
