Sharpe Blog

One can’t raise money for a charity without having an insight into this question and its answers. In my experience, the reasons individuals make charitable gifts include: a strong desire to give back for some service the charity has provided to the donor or to a close family member or friend (a service such as …Read More

I don’t know. I’m a lawyer, and try as I may, I cannot, in any law library, find a definition of “estate note”. It’s a made-up, meaningless term. There are, however, two instruments wrongfully called “estate notes”: an enforceable pledge, and a contract to make a will. The garden variety enforceable pledge is a naming …Read More

We left off last time with the fact that the qualified appraisal (Q.A.) rules were revised substantially as of January 1, 2019. Yes, the Q.A. rules are the donor’s problem. But they become the donee’s problem if the donee receives a copy of the donor’s appraisal and doesn’t send the donor a letter stating that …Read More

Last time, we looked at pledges. A gift acceptance policy should require that all pledge agreements be vetted by the development office before being executed. A gift acceptance policy also should state: that the donor must state up-front, in writing, the source or sources of assets that will be used to pay the pledge; and …Read More

The purpose of a gift acceptance policy is to keep a charity, especially its president and its development officers, out of trouble in dealing with donors. Three problem areas that are major problem areas for charities but which are seldom addressed in gift acceptance polices are [1] appraisals, [2] gift receipts, and [3] pledges. Let’s …Read More

How do charities named as IRA beneficiaries deal with the problem of getting their beneficiary distributions from the IRA custodians? Charities deal with this problem in different ways. Some deep-pocket charities devote personnel to filling out the paperwork and are willing (meaning individuals who are employed by the charity are willing) to provide SSNs, home …Read More

Let’s now look at the situation in which Donor names Charity as beneficiary of her IRA. This is a common situation. Common in large part because charities have promoted heavily the idea of leaving IRA assets to a charitable organization. When Donor dies, her IRA becomes an inherited IRA, and Charity becomes beneficiary of the …Read More

Last time, we looked at how the term IRA is defined; who can establish a brand new IRA; and the definition of the term “inherited IRA”. Now we dig deeper into the concept of an inherited IRA. We’ll do this using a real-life example of an individual beneficiary. Later we’ll look at a real-life example …Read More

It’s good to know what an IRA is, given that so much money comes to charities from IRAs. An IRA is defined in the Tax Code as: a trust established in the U.S. for the benefit of an individual or his/her beneficiaries that meets certain requirements (e.g., is prohibited from investing in life insurance). That’s …Read More

Last time, we looked at the idea of a CRT paying into a second trust. We focused on an example of a charitably motivated parent who wants to provide support for his 49-year-old disabled son. The plan we examined was a 20-year term-certain CRT paying into a second trust that was to provide for the …Read More