The Baltimore Bar Foundation depends upon contributions in support of its work. With the initiation of the Planned Giving Program, the Bar Foundation is undertaking to build a permanent endowment to strengthen and extend available opportunities for giving, and to suggest giving methods of potential benefit to individual contributors and their families, as well as the Baltimore Bar Foundation.
Simply stated, Planned Giving attempts to provide opportunities and techniques for giving that will enable contributors to make gift commitments in such a way as to achieve their own financial planning objectives while also helping to address the Bar Foundation’s long-term resource needs.
Modern gift instruments, supported by provision in the tax law, now make it possible for prospective contributors to consider making gifts with several component parts applicable, as needs arise, over varying periods of time. It is possible, for example, to combine an outright gift with a pledge, or a retained life income gift and a bequest in such a way as to provide a larger commitment than any single means of giving would permit. Thus, a contributor would be able to take advantage of tax incentives that accrue to certain types of commitments. Options are as varied as individual interests and circumstances, and careful planning can help to identify and employ the options most suitable to individual needs. Hence, the popular and now broadly accepted concept of Planned Giving.