Introduction to Planned Giving

• The Planned Giving Alternative - How as a donor to Scouting , you can use your giving to achieve personal goals, enhance your financial security and help shape the future of your local council. 
• Designing Your Gift - How you can choose the gift that is right for you, your family, and for Scouting. 

THE PLANNED GIVING ALTERNATIVE

As a donor to the Boy Scouts of America, you can use your giving to achieve personal goals, enhance your financial security, and to help shape the future of Scouting. Planned giving includes a number of ways for you to include charitable giving in your total financial plan. Our government encourages philanthropy by providing advantageous tax treatment of gifts under both state and federal law. This was reasserted in the recent 1997 Tax Act. Planned giving can help you maximize these tax benefits.

Many times, these tax advantages will make it possible for you to make a greater gift than you thought possible, while also benefiting your family and heirs. Many donors and supporters of Scouting have chosen planned giving as a way to show their interest in supporting Scouting beyond their lifetimes, while realizing benefits for themselves today.

The type of asset and the way it is given to Scouting determines the actual tax and financial benefits resulting from a gift. Certain planned gift arrangements provide you with an opportunity to diversify your holdings, turn highly appreciated assets into a gift that provides you income, and enjoy significant tax savings. With careful planning today, you may reduce or eliminate estate, inheritance, or gift taxes, allowing your family and the charities you support to receive the full benefits of your life's work. Certain gift plans actually result in a greater amount of wealth passed on to family.

As with all financial decisions, a planned gift should be designed with care. The Detroit Area Council's planned giving professionals will work closely and confidentially with you to ensure that your gift to Scouting achieves your individual goals, and expresses your personal vision for Scouting.

DESIGNING YOUR GIFT

With a major gift, you can help build a new camp facility. Or pay for Scouts to go to camp who couldn't afford to go. Or endow a specific program or position in Scouting. Or anything else you can imagine. The use of your gift is restricted only by your imagination. Your gift can be -- and should be -- an individual expression of your vision and goals.

As you begin to define your vision, ask yourself: What are my personal objectives and needs? What are my financial goals? What is the best asset to use to make my gift? Which gift plans can best accomplish my goals for my family and Scouting?

The Detroit Area Council Planned Giving Professionals are a resource for you. We are experienced in gift planning and understand the importance of philanthropy as a part of a successful overall estate plan. Along with our Regional and National support personnel, we are available to assist you and your advisers as you consider the many opportunities presented by planned giving. Our goal is to present you with options and to help you make the best choice possible. We accomplish this by ensuring that your gift expresses your interests in Scouting, goes to the programs of your choice, and maximizes the benefits you and the Scouting will receive from your gift.

Working together, the Boy Scouts of America and its supporters can create a gift that meets the needs of our donors and blends the individual's vision with the objectives of Scouting and the youth and communities it serves. 

Last Edited March 05, 2007