by Robert F. Sharpe, Jr. For the last several years, unprecedented reductions in federal gift and estate taxes have altered the charitable gift planning landscape. While transfer taxes were once a concern to a sizeable number of taxpayers, current exemption levels mean that such taxes now affect only a small percentage of the wealthiest Americans. Consider 2012, the …Read More

D. Kay Malone, J.D., is the Senior Director of Gift Planning with World Wildlife Fund. She started her career as a trial attorney before becoming Director of Major Gifts and Planned Giving for Project HOPE, and later Director of Major Gifts at American Farmland Trust. She has served in her present position at World Wildlife Fund since 2008. Here she shares with Give & Take the …Read More

The Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) 2014 Report is now available. This year’s report provides an in-depth look at giving to education in America. As has been previously reported, charitable contributions to colleges and universities increased 10.8 percent over 2013. This is the best single-year gain since 2000, and the $37.5 billion total is the highest recorded since the …Read More

According to Giving USA, charitable giving totaled a record $358.4 billion last year, continuing its rebound after the lows reached during the Great Recession. After peaking at $355.17 billion in 2007 just before the financial crisis, charitable giving experienced its most severe drop since the Great Depression. After a two-year slump, philanthropic giving began a slow recovery that saw giving increase five years in …Read More