Planned Giving through ASF is a way for you to give the gift of your legacy through a structured financial arrangement. It is a personally enriching way of leaving your mark in the world by making a notable impact on the lives of animals long into the future.
You can choose to have your Planned Giving contribution take place either during your lifetime or after depending on what works best for you, with benefits like tax deductions and asset management coming into play. You can give a gift of equity, a life insurance policy, real estate, personal property or savings amongst other possibilities.
While the act of setting up Planned Giving within a will or trust can be accomplished with the simple addition of one short phrase, we understand that the decision can be a considerable one. And while we cannot make the decision for you, we have done our best to ensure that the process is simple to understand and enact.
Contact ASF
You can begin the process of Planned Giving by contacting ASF. We have volunteer Certified Financial PlannerTM (CFP) professionals that will help you while answering questions you may have about how the money from your contribution may be used, what needs exist within the organization, and outstanding goals and objectives.
Contact An Advisor
If you have an advisor or legal representative, they will be able to offer assistance, or direct you to a specialist, to create a will or estate plan, or to make changes to existing plans, to ensure that your charitable donation reaches its destination. You can also work directly with ASF’s volunteer Certified Financial PlannerTM (CFP) professionals.
Important Information
When creating or adjusting your will or estate plan, you’ll need to include the following information:
Legal Entity: Animal Shelter Foundation
Address: Your home address
Federal Tax ID: 56-2643835
Types of Planned Giving
We’ve included examples of Planned Giving options below, but if any of the information here feels overwhelming or confusing, we’re here to help you through it. ASF’s volunteer Certified Financial Planner™ (CFP) professionals can help simplify what might otherwise appear overly complicated or intimidating. Our team can also work hand-in-hand with an advisor of your choosing to help guide you.
By including ASF in your will or trust, your contribution will continue to provide financial assistance for years to come. This is typically the most common form of Planned Giving.
Gift annuities include tax savings while you are living and also helps non-profits like ASF. There are multiple way to structure a gift annuity that include fixed-income payments, reduction in capital gains taxes and deferred payment annuities.
When you commit your retirement assets, either in full or in part, your IRA, 401(k) or other forms of tax-deferments can be paid to ASF as a beneficiary. As with many forms of Planned Giving, there are tax advantages available as a result of the contributions.
Listing ASF as a beneficiary, either in full or in part, of your life insurance policy enables the payments from your policy to be made without penalty of the federal estate tax. Additionally, you can elect to make a gift from your insurance policy provided it has been paid-up and has a cash value.
A Gift of Business allows you to transfer a closely-held stock to pay dividends to ASF, while with a Gift of Real Estate, you can make the generous donation of the deed to your home or other property for use or sale by ASF.
Once you’re at the age where required minimum distributions (RMDs) need to be made from your traditional IRAs, you can donate the money that would otherwise be paid towards taxes through a Qualified Charitable Distribution.
If you are over 70, you have the option of rolling over a charitable IRA without the distribution counting towards your taxable income. You can also commit your retirement assets, such as an IRA, 401(k) or other forms of tax-deferments, either in full or in part, to be paid to ASF as a beneficiary.
It isn’t necessary to be especially well-off to be a participant of Planned Giving. When people hear things like “estate tax” they sometimes think Planned Giving is only for people with millions of dollars in the bank. While we certainly don’t suggest that anyone stretch themselves past the point of financial stability, it is entirely possible to become a Planned Giving beneficiary with even modest savings.
Planned Giving is sometimes referred to as Leaving a Legacy, Legacy Giving, Gift Planning and maybe even a few other names that we haven’t yet heard ourselves. These are all the same thing, with the only differences being how and what organizations benefit from the contributions.
Yes, while you can set up Planned Giving to take place following your death, you can also contribute to ASF through Planned Giving so that you can see your contribution have positive outcomes during your lifetime while potentially reducing your taxes depending on the type of Planned Giving you’ve selected.
We understand there are many ways your contributions can do good in the world. ASF, a non-profit organization created by volunteers, exists to help the animals in care of Tallahassee Animal Services, more commonly known as the Animal Shelter at Tom Brown Park in Tallahassee, Florida. We do everything in our power to support our community’s homeless animals and to supplement the Shelter’s veterinary team. Since the start of ASF, intakes to the shelter have been reduced by nearly 50%.
ASF minimizes operating costs as much as is possible to ensure over 92% of all donations go towards helping us achieve our goals to help homeless animals in need.
