Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Ways to Give to Baptist Causes

By: Laurie Valentine

Your church, association and the Kentucky Baptist Convention and its agencies and institutions provide a wide variety of important ministries that need financial support. The ways you can support these important causes through legacy giving (giving out of your assets, rather than your income) are also wide-ranging.

An outright gift of cash, appreciated securities or real estate is probably the most common, and simplest, way to make gifts during your lifetime.

Other methods of lifetime giving, such as charitable gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts, allow you to set up a future gift to one or more Baptist causes while retaining an annual income for your lifetime or a term of years.

There are also a variety of gifts you can arrange now to benefit the causes of your choice at your death. The most common is a bequest in your Will or Living Trust. Another possibility is to name a Baptist cause as the beneficiary of some portion of your retirement account, IRA or a life insurance policy.

You can designate your gift be used for a specific program or ministry or you can allow the organization to choose how to use your gift. You may also want to limit the organization to using only the earnings off what you give (this type of arrangement is called an “endowment fund”).

Gifts may be made directly to the benefiting organization or may be given to a third party, such as the Kentucky Baptist Foundation, to manage for the designated beneficiary cause or causes.

Laurie Valentine is COO and Trust Counsel for the Kentucky Baptist Foundation, PO Box 436389, Louisville, KY 40253; (502) 489-3533 or 1-866-489-3533 (Toll-free, Kentucky Only); KYBaptistFoundation.org

The information in this article is provided as general information and is not intended as legal or tax advice. For advice and assistance in specific cases, you should seek the advice of an attorney or other professional adviser.







Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Growth In Giving 2015

By: Richard Carnes

The annual report on charitable giving in the United States for the year 2015 was recently published by Giving USA Foundation. The Giving USA report announced that 2015 was America’s most-generous year ever with a total of $373.25 billion contributed to charitable causes, which was a 4.1% increase over the prior year. Religious organizations continue to remain the number one recipient of charitable contributions in the USA at 32% or $119.3 billion, followed by donations to Education at 15% or $57.5 billion and Human Services at 12% or $45.2 billion as other large recipients.

There has been a general slowing of giving to religious causes in recent years, but contributions held steady at 32% from 2014 to 2015. The encouraging news is that almost 74% of religious organizations responding to the Nonprofit Research Collaborative Winter 2016 survey reported increases in 2015 contributions.

We are pleased to report that the Kentucky Baptist Foundation for its fiscal year 2015 distributed in excess of $6.0 million toward Kingdom advancement through the various church, missionary, educational, evangelistic and compassion ministry causes of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, the Southern Baptist Convention and other Christian organizations. The distributions from the Foundation during 2015 increased 10.7% from the prior year.

These distributions were made possible by the many faithful and generous Christian stewards who practiced estate stewardship and generous giving at a deeper level. Their gifts through bequests, charitable trusts and other types of legacy giving have created perpetual endowment funds that will provide growing distributions to Baptist causes until Jesus comes again.

If you have questions about Christian estate planning strategies or want to request a private estate stewardship consultation, please contact the Foundation’s trust counsel, Laurie Valentine, or me at our toll-free number (866) 489-3533.

Richard Carnes is the president of the Kentucky Baptist Foundation, P O Box 436389, Louisville, KY 40253; toll-free (866) 489-3533; www.KYBaptistFoundation.org.

The information in this article is provided as general information and is not intended as legal or tax advice. For advice and assistance in specific cases, you should seek the advice of an attorney or other professional adviser.