Supporting WILPF with other kinds of donation

Thank you for your support of peace, women’s empowerment, and activist organizing at WILPF US!
 

CHOOSE FROM THESE OTHER KINDS OF DONATIONS

• YOUR REQUIRED MINIMUM DISTRIBUTION from your IRA.  
  Did you know you are required at age 72 to withdraw a portion of your Individual Retirement Account? Click here to find out more. 
   
• GIFTS OF INSURANCE that may not be needed by the original beneficiary are simple: just make WILPF US the beneficiary of a life insurance policy of any size. Click here to find out more.
   
• GIFTS OF APPRECIATED STOCKS OR BONDS can be arranged easily. Let us walk you through the simple process.   
   
• BEQUESTS & PLANNED GIVING let you plan ahead, so your money continues to work as hard as you have for peace.
  Start planning NOW with our easy options – through a will, gifts of insurance, or pension plan remainder payouts. Click here to find out more

_______________________

If you have an individual retirement account, donate some or all of your
REQUIRED MINIMUM DISTRIBUTION TO WILPF US
for our continuing work for peace.

What Is a required minimum distribution?

A required minimum distribution (RMD) is the amount of money that must be withdrawn from a traditional IRA, SEP, or SIMPLE IRA by owners and qualified retirement plan participants upon reaching a certain age.

As of 2020, the starting age for RMDs from retirement accounts changed. It Now RMDs must begin by April 1 following the year account holders reach age 72. (Prior to 2020, the RMD age had been 70½ years old.) Each subsequent year the retiree must withdraw the RMD amount, based on the current RMD calculation.  This required annual distribution could be part of your planned giving to WILPF.

The 2020 Corona Virus Stimulus legislation suspended required minimum distributions from retirement accounts in 2020, giving those accounts more time to recover from the stock market downturns.

KEY POINTS

• The RMD is the amount you must annually take out of your IRA account to avoid tax consequences.
• Retirees can and do withdraw more from their IRAs than the RMD.
• If you have multiple accounts, you will usually need to calculate the RMD for each separately, and may have to take an RMD from each.
• The 2020 corona virus emergency legislation suspended all RMDs from retirement accounts for 2020.

Please consider donating all or some of your required distribution to WILPF.

Read more about this here.  
 

You don’t need to get a lawyer involved to make
GIFTS OF INSURANCE TO WILPF US

On any life insurance policy, you can change the beneficiary to WILPF US without engaging a lawyer or accountant. You simply contact your insurance company or agent, and they can easily make the change.  Often people have more than one insurance policy, so they can choose to leave one death benefit to WILPF US and another to a family member or close friend. 

If you haven’t reviewed your life insurance policy for a while, now is a good time to make sure the original beneficiary is still alive and is the one you want to receive your death benefits. 

THE CORRECT WORDS:   

“Please change the beneficiary on my life insurance policy, POLICY # ________________. To Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom US Section, Friends House, 4211 Grand Ave., Des Moines IA  50312.”

You will need to sign a form that authorizes a change in beneficiary.  

It may make sense to let your family know of this change, so they are not taken by surprise. 
 

You may enjoy a tax advantage when you donate
APPRECIATED STOCKS AND SECURITIES

It’s is as easy as a call to your broker to donate appreciated stocks and securities with the electronic funds transfer processes. 

If you do not require these gifts to be tax-deductible and wish to donate them directly to WILPF US, contact us at plannedgiving@wilpfus.org.

YOUR TAX ADVANTAGE:  
Gifts of appreciated securities may be tax deductible at full market value on the date 
of transfer.  To donate them as tax-deductible gifts, you’ll go through our fiscal sponsor, the Peace Development Fund (PDF), but be sure to list the gift as for PDF/WILPF US.  

Here is all the information you’ll need to provide your broker:    

DTC# 0226

VERIS Wealth Partners (National Financial Services)

FAO: Peace Development Fund

ACCT #:  656-350513

FED ID#:   042-738-794

You may email PDF’s broker directly with questions at sfahrer (at) veriswp (dot) com or phone Steve Fahrer at 800-659-8189.   FAX#  212-346-0084.

Here’s the information you will need to provide from YOUR broker:

• Statement that this gift is earmarked for WILPF US
• Date of the gift transfer to PDF
• Number of shares and name of stock
• Value of shares on the date of the gift
• Name of the donor
• Address and phone number of the donor.

TAX BENEFITS: 

If you donate stock you may:

• Claim a charitable gift deduction for the full value of the stock on your current year’s taxes, if you itemize.
• Avoid capital gains taxes you would owe, if it has increased in value and if you sold the stock yourself and then donated the value.
• Avoid paying brokers fees on the sale of the stock.

To receive the FULL tax benefit, it’s important that you donate your appreciated stocks or securities directly to PDF for WILPF US, to take advantage of a tax deduction. 

If you donate to WILPF US directly (sacrificing a tax deduction) and have us sell it, you avoid the broker fees for the sale, which would reduce the amount of your gift.
 

Continue your life-long commitment to activism with
BEQUESTS AND PLANNED GIVING

Click here to view or download the WILPF US BEQUEST BROCHURE,

“SOWING SEEDS OF PEACE”.    

Click here to view or download the WILPF US Bequest Reminder BOOKMARK.

Your legacy can work hard for peace,

But you must act NOW to put those plans in motion.

Now is the time to have this important conversation.

It’s important to inform your family or executor
of your intention to donate from your estate to WILPF.

You’ll want to have this conversation now, so there are no surprises later on. 

In doing so, you can be sure that your planned gift is arranged for, and that your heirs know that it will not preclude whatever inheritances you plan to leave for them.  

All bequests are made after gift inheritances are distributed and debts are settled, but they must be specified in your will.

Under current inheritance law, only the extremely wealthy need their gifts to be tax deductible. To donate from your will directly to WILPF US, without a tax deduction, here is the language that must appear in your will: 

THE CORRECT WORDS – here is the language you must include in your will:

“I bequeath the sum of $____ or __% of the rest, residue and remainder of my estate to Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom US Section, Friends House,  4211 Grand Ave., Des Moines IA 50312, Tax Number 23-1231270, for the benefit of its general purposes and work for peace.”

If you do need this gift to be tax-deductible the wording would shift slightly:

“I bequeath the sum of $____ or __% of the rest, residue and remainder of my estate to Peace Development Fund, 44 N. Prospect Street, Amherst MA 01002, Tax Number 04-2738794, for the benefit of WILPF US for its general purposes.”

PLANNING AHEAD MAKES IT EASIER FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY

Why not take this opportunity to complete the rest of your final plans?

If you have preferences for your final resting place, funeral arrangements and obituary wording, it’s possible to address these ahead of time. Many funeral homes offer an option for a pre-paid funeral that relieves your family from having to make hard decisions during their period of mourning. Having arrangements made in advance makes this emotional time less difficult for your family.  

Now is a good time to consider writing out final detailed instructions for your family or executor to follow after your death:  

• If you’ve made arrangements already for a pre-paid funeral, you can put those instructions into a file and let your family know where to look for the file.  
• You can write your own obituary and add it to the file, so you are sure that all the details you wish to include are written ahead of time.  
• Consider including a request for final memorials to go to WILPF US, “in lieu of flowers”. 
• Even small donations to WILPF make a huge difference, and keep WILPF visible in your community. 

THE CORRECT WORDS – here's how you might explain this to your family now:

“I’ve been committed to the work of WILPF US for __ years. I’m planning a bequest to WILPF in my will.  I’m putting whatever assets remain after my debts and inheritances towards the work of my heart… the cause of peace.”

How common is planned giving?

It turns out that most people do want to use the remainder of their estates to help change the world.

Your lawyer and accountant or financial advisor will be very familiar with end of life financial plans. Even people who are not millionaires work with advisors to plan for small and large gifts from the remainder of their estates after their death.  You can distribute the residual money in IRAs, pension plans (401k plans), and make WILPF a beneficiary in an insurance policy.  Advisors will be very accustomed to this discussion.

When people do estate planning, they may not think about supporting the causes that have been important to them, and financial advisors don’t always suggest it. Yet it turns out that most people do want to use some of their assets to help make change. Making charitable giving part of your planning can transform a potentially miserable process into a source of joy. 

People often respond positively when, during the estate planning process, they have the chance to donate to the charities and causes they’ve supported during their lives.

So we’re asking you to THINK now about designating WILPF US as a cause you want to support in your will.  

Only 54% of US adults over 55 have a will that directs where their money will go once they pass away, according to a 2018 article in Forbes Magazine. The article indicates that fewer than 30% of all Americans have an up-to-date will.

One big reason so many of us die without making our wishes known to our loved ones and others is that dying is an event we may not want to contemplate.  But by framing the decision in a more positive light — about the influence you would like to have, supporting the vision of a world at peace — you can feel you’ve made a significant contribution to important ongoing activism.

For more information on any of the planned giving options listed above, please contact us at plannedgiving@wilpfus.org.  

WILPF US is not in any way intending to provide tax, legal or financial planning advice with the information provided above. 

We strongly advise donors to consult an attorney or financial planner to make bequests and to inform their family members of their end-of-life wishes. 

This information is provided simply as a way to begin the discernment process and help inform your decisions.

PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU...  

HAVE SUPPORTED WILPF US THROUGH BEQUESTS AND PLANNED GIFTS THROUGHOUT OUR HISTORY.

Real people, not millionaires, have made a real difference at WILPF by remembering to arrange for gifts after their passing. Read about their stories on page 24 in this Peace & Freedom magazine article. 

You don’t need to be a millionaire to leave a meaningful bequest.

We prefer to know ahead if we can anticipate these gifts, so we ask donors to let us know when they make these arrangements.  But sometimes they arrive as windfalls of generosity. In many years they have helped us balance our budget, or helped us fund a project or program we would not have been able to achieve without their funding. A portion of all bequests now goes into a reserve cash account to ensure sustainability, while the largest portion supports our peace and justice activists across the US and support rising women leaders. 

To give us a heads up about your arrangements, reach us plannedgiving@wilpfus.org