Gifts to IRE and Your Estate Plan
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Estate plan options suggested for support of IRE
As part of its drive to ensure a strong future for the organization, IRE is providing an outline for possible gifts through estate plans.

Your gift would provide the resources and training needed by journalists everywhere. The gift could support a program of training in investigative reporting, fellowships for journalists to IRE programs or conferences, Web site services, or publications.

Often, a carefully prepared estate plan provides the best means to ensure support for your loved ones and your preferred charities. An estate plan allows you to retain the use of your assets during your lifetime and still make an important gift to IRE, which is tax-deductible. An estate plan involves various technical documents that should be drafted by an attorney.

Gifts via will or trust
The most common method of charitable giving is through a will or personal trust. A will or trust can provide that IRE receive a specific cash amount or property, or a percentage of your estate. Alternatively, a residuary bequest can give IRE a portion of the estate after all other bequests, debts, taxes, and expenses have been satisfied. In a case when you are not survived by your intended beneficiaries, you can also make a contingent bequest to ensure that IRE will be provided for rather than unintended beneficiaries. Gifts made through your will or trust will enable your estate to take a tax deduction up to the value of the property transferred. The following language may be incorporated into your will or trust in order to make a bequest to IRE:

I give, devise, and bequeath the (sum of/ percentage of/ residue of my estate) to Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., a not-for-profit organization with its principal offices in Columbia, Missouri, to be utilized for the benefit of such organization {as specified in a gift agreement on file with such organization.}

Lifetime gifts
Gifts made during your lifetime are another important estate planning technique because they provide you with the benefit of an income tax deduction during your lifetime, as well as avoiding estate tax on the value of the gift, and provide IRE with immediate income. Outright gifts of cash are simple and are tax-deductible up to 50 percent of your adjusted gross income in the year of the gift (the excess may be carried over for the next five years). Cash gifts may be made by making your check or money order out to "Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc."

Gifts of appreciated property, such as securities and real estate, are also popular because not only is the fair market value of such gifts deductible up to 30 percent of your adjusted gross income for the year in which the gift was made (with a five-year carry over), you may also avoid paying capital gains tax on such appreciated property. A similar income tax deduction is available for gifts of tangible personal property to IRE if such property is related to the exempt purposes of IRE, but if not, the deduction is limited to the donor's basis in the property. Please contact your tax advisor, legal counsel, or IRE's development officer, Jennifer Erickson, for more information on how to make gifts of appreciated property.

Gifts of retirement assets
A gift of retirement plan or IRA balances is another estate planning method that is becoming increasingly popular due to the fact that such retirement and IRA balances are subject to both income and estate tax rates which can total 85 percent. Funding a charitable bequest to IRE with your IRA or retirement plan proceeds allows you to avoid this income and estate tax liability and to make a gift with pre-tax dollars.

Complex trusts, funds and annuities
These are more complex charitable giving mechanisms that are frequently part of an estate plan. These gift methods may be implemented during your lifetime or at death:

• Charitable Remainder Trusts - involve a gift of property to IRE in trust with the donor receiving a fixed amount or percentage of income from such property for his or her lifetime and IRE receiving the remainder at the death of the donor.



• Charitable Lead Trust - is like the Charitable Remainder Trust except in reverse in that IRE receives the income from the donated property for a certain period of time and the donor receives the remainder.



• Pooled Income Fund - is when two or more donors irrevocably transfer property to IRE, which then invests the property and distributes the annual proceeds to the donors or their directed beneficiary for a certain period of time at the end of which the remainder is contributed to IRE.



• Charitable Gift Annuities - is a contract between the donor and IRE whereby IRE agrees to pay one or two annuitants a fixed dollar amount (based on life expectancy) each year for life in exchange for a contribution of property.

By making such gifts, the donor (1) avoids estate taxes by removing the asset from his or her estate (and capital gains tax if an appreciated asset is used), and (2) receives an income tax benefit which is generally calculated using a variety of factors such as the donor's age, the trust's payout rate, and the federal discount rate. Please contact your tax advisor, legal counsel, or IRE's development officer, Jennifer Erickson, for more information on how to implement the above gift mechanisms.

The preceding types of charitable giving are only some of the more common means of incorporating IRE into your estate plan. Other alternatives exist that may offer particular advantages to your circumstances. If you believe that your own situation requires a gift mechanism that is not described here, please contact Jennifer Erickson at IRE, who will be happy to discuss other options with you (e-mail: jennifer@ire.org, phone: (573) 884-2222).