Life Insurance: Expand Your Charitable Reach
Life insurance is a tool with many purposes. Perhaps when your children were young, you purchased policies to provide them with financial protection. But if your situation has changed, you might be interested in one of the more satisfying uses for life insurance you no longer need — donating it to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.
A gift of life insurance has many perks:
Cost Efficient
You can make a significant gift even if your means are limited today. By making small premium payments each year, you can leave a sizable gift.
Tax Beneficial
For existing policies, you may receive an income tax charitable deduction if you itemize. For a new policy, with the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption as owner and beneficiary, premiums may be deductible.
Secure and Confidential
Life insurance is a contract and can’t be changed by heirs. If you make the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption policy owner and beneficiary, it’s not included in probate and remains confidential.
Helpful to Our Mission
Life insurance gives you a low cost option to make a gift, helping you to make a bigger impact on our work than you may have thought possible.
Arrange a Life Insurance Gift
Give an Existing Policy
When you name the Foundation as the policy owner and beneficiary, you qualify for a federal income tax charitable deduction for the lower of the policy’s fair market value or your cost basis. For paid-up insurance, the fair market value is the cost of replacing the coverage with a new policy issued today based on the current age of the insured at the same face amount as the original policy.
If premiums are still payable on the policy, the fair market value is usually close to the cash surrender value. You may stipulate to us that you wish to no longer make future premium payments, allowing us to access the surrender value immediately for our cash needs.
An alternative, however, may be even more attractive. The policy can remain ours and will stay in force so that someday we receive the original face amount. You pledge to make yearly cash gifts to the Foundation, which we will use to pay the premiums. The gifts are deductible if you itemize, and the policy is thereby kept in force with pre-tax instead of after-tax dollars for a lower actual cost.
Purchase a New Policy for Future Charitable Gifts
In most states, you can enter into a new insurance contract with a qualified organization such as the Foundation as the beneficiary and owner of the policy.