Gift Planning
A gift to HBS can also provide financial benefits to you and your family. Our team is here to help you develop a strategy for charitable giving, from the big picture down to the details.
Harvard is able to work with a wide range of assets—restricted securities, real estate, and intellectual property to name only a few—in addition to gifts of cash and appreciated securities. We now offer donors the opportunity to invest charitable trust assets in the Harvard endowment, which has historically achieved outstanding returns.
Let's start the conversation.
Definitions
- Bequest Intentions
- Real Estate
- Charitable Remainder Trusts
- Charitable Lead Trusts
- Charitable Gift Annuities
- Pooled Income Funds
- Trust Investment
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- A bequest provides a future gift to HBS through inclusion in your will, revocable trust, retirement plan, or life insurance. Bequests enable many people to have their greatest impact on the School. In the case of large estates, there can be significant tax savings.
- Gifts of real estate can be made outright by deeding property to HBS. You may also donate a partial interest in a property. If you donate your principal residence, vacation home, or farm with a retained life estate, you and your spouse can receive an immediate charitable deduction and still retain the right to use the property throughout your lifetime.
- A charitable remainder trust can be established with an irrevocable gift of cash, securities, or other assets. The trust provides regular payments to one or more individuals before the remainder goes to HBS. The payments can be a fixed amount or a percentage of the market value of the assets, revalued annually. You receive an immediate charitable deduction on your income tax for a portion of the gift amount.
- A charitable lead trust can be established with a gift of cash, securities, or other property. Lead trusts provide support to HBS—either a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of the trust's value—usually for a specified number of years. When the trust ends, the remainder typically goes to your children or grandchildren with reduced or even eliminated transfer taxes.
- A charitable gift annuity is an agreement in which Harvard agrees to pay an annual fixed income to you and/or your spouse or other individuals for life in exchange for an irrevocable gift to HBS. The amount of income is determined by the size of the gift and the life expectancy of the annuitants. Advantages include the security of lifetime income, a federal tax deduction for the gift portion of the annuity, and reduced estate taxes.
- You can contribute to a pooled income fund by irrevocably donating cash, marketable securities, or a combination of these, naming Harvard as the trustee. Your gift is pooled by Harvard Management Company and managed like a mutual fund. You or your beneficiary receive a check each quarter reflecting your share of the earnings generated by the fund's investment portfolio. There are a variety of funds, and yields vary depending on performance.
- Trust Investment—Endowment Option: Charitable remainder trust assets may now be invested in the Harvard endowment, which has consistently outperformed the market. This option works best for trusts with expected terms of eight years or longer. As with any investment strategy, past performance is not predictive of future results.
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