Charitable Gift Annuities Are 0n The Rise

Move over, charitable trusts. Make way for the charitable gift annuity.

Typically viewed as entry-level gifting methods thanks to low minimum contribution amounts, low cost, and simplicity, charitable gift annuities have had a spike in inflows from wealthy donors lately. According to a BNY Mellon Wealth Management study, in 2019, assets in gift annuities were up 21% over the prior year, and the average gift was 56% larger. Assets continued to flow into charitable trusts, but at only a slightly higher level than in 2018.

The surge in popularity in gift annuities is likely a result of people’s desire for a guaranteed lifetime annuity at a time when yields are at historic lows in the fixed-income market, and a hesitation to sock money into a charitable remainder annuity trust (CRAT).

A CRAT is the gift annuity’s equivalent in the trust world, and typically a popular tool. But ultralow interest rates and high valuations in the stock market make for a lousy environment for CRATs, says Crystal Thompkins, national director of gift planning services at BNY Mellon Wealth Management, who expects gift annuities’ popularity to extend through this year.

As winds shift in the economy, the markets, and regulatory environment, it’s not uncommon for the popularity of different charitable planning tools to rise and fall. Given the surge in popularity of gift annuities, it’s worth a look at how they size up these days relative to their closest charitable trust cousin.

Charitable Gift Annuities

A charitable gift annuity is a simple contract guaranteeing that if you give a nonprofit organisation a lump sum, it will pay you a fixed, lifetime annuity based on actuarial factors—a host of market factors combined with your life expectancy. Minimum donations are around $2,000 and, unlike a trust, no attorney is required to set one up (hence no attorney fees).

Even if you live beyond your life expectancy, after your lump-sum equivalent has been paid out, you continue to receive the annuity. Depending on the contract, the annuity can continue to pay out to a surviving spouse. If you and your spouse die before your lump sum has been paid out, the charity keeps the balance in its coffers.

Payments can be deferred, which increases the amount paid out in the future annuity. A partial donation for the gift can be taken upfront. Capital gains taxes on the growth of underlying assets are spread over the annuity payments. When interest rates are low, the future capital gains’ bite out of annuity payments is lower, leaving more intact as income, Thompkins says.

Nonprofit groups that offer charitable annuities have large infrastructures, such as museums and universities. “We’re talking those with hundreds of millions in assets that are segregated to support their annuity programs,” Thompkins says. “These are diverse pools designed to absorb potential risk. It’s like managing a pension.”

The downside is that not all nonprofits offer gift annuities, and they aren’t customised, says Pam Lucina, chief fiduciary officer at Northern Trust.

Charitable Remainder Trusts

In contrast, trusts can pay out to a number of different charities, over a specified period of time instead of a lifetime, and can be used to transfer assets to heirs. The CRAT is the most similar to a gift annuity: It turns a lump sum into an annuity, and what’s left at the end goes to charity—at least 10% of assets transferred to the trust is required to be left as a gift.

But the CRAT has lost its luster lately, Thompkins says. The annuity and future gift are dependent on the high probability of the underlying invested assets performing within certain parameters. With stock market valuations high, and the economy in ragged shape due to Covid-19, there’s good reason for concern that the market could enter a sustained bear market.

“In 2008 and 2009, there were trusts that were exhausted with no benefit to either the charity or the donor,” Thompkins says. “Many people are leery now.”

Could a recession be the best time to launch a tech startup?

A recent study suggests that is the case. The authors found that tech startups that began operations during the 2007-09 recession—and received their first patent in that time—tended to last longer than tech startups founded a few years before or after. And those recession-era companies also tended to be more innovative than the rest.

“The effect of macroeconomic trends is not always intuitive,” says Daniel Bias , an assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, who co-wrote the paper with Alexander Ljungqvist, Stefan Persson Family Chair in Entrepreneurial Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Drawing on data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the authors examined a sample of 6,946 tech startups that launched and received their first patent approval between 2002 and 2012.

One group—about 5,734 companies—launched and got their patent outside of the 2007-09 recession. Of those, about 70% made it to their seventh year. But the startups that launched and got their first patent during the recession—about 1,212 companies—were 12% more likely to be in business in their seventh year.

These recession-era firms were also more likely to file a novel and influential patent after their first one. (That is, a patent the researchers determined was dissimilar to patents in the same niche that came before it, but similar to ones that came after it.)

So, why did these recession-era firms outperform their peers? Labor markets played a big role.

A widespread lack of available jobs meant that the startups were able to land more productive and innovative employees, especially in their research and development groups, and then hold on to them. More important, the tight labor markets also meant that the founding inventors—the people named on the very first patent—were more likely to stick around rather than try for opportunities elsewhere.

For startups started during the 2007-09 recession, founding inventors were 25 percentage points less likely to leave their company within the first three years. On average, about 43% of founding inventors in the entire sample left their startup within the first three years.

“Our study really highlights the importance of labor retention for young innovative startups. Retaining founding inventors cannot only help them survive, but also thrive,” Bias says.

Charitable Gift Annuities Are 0n The Rise

A study suggests that when jobs are hard to come by, the best workers are more available—and stay longer