Planning a charitable bequest donation as a long-term impact donation provides you with financial, emotional, and spiritual benefits.
If you’re looking forward to planning the affairs of your estate, a charitable bequest — also known as legacy gifting or planned giving — may be at the forefront of your mind, and for good reason.
As you get involved in preparing your will and discussing how to leave a bequest to charity, you may have discussions with others involving charitable giving, with the goal of bringing you to a place of clarity and planned giving explained. You may discuss questions like “What is a charitable bequest, and why does it matter?” “What is planned giving, and what kinds of benefits does it offer?”
involving questions about charitable giving. What is a charitable bequest, and why does it matter? What is planned giving, and what kinds of benefits does it offer?
If you’re looking forward to planning the affairs of your estate, a charitable bequest — also known as legacy gifting or planned giving — may be at the forefront of your mind, and for good reason.
Charitable bequests are gifts that are made as a part of a will or trust, and are organized and decided as you perform important estate planning functions. Charitable bequests are one of the most popular and flexible ways to support the causes that are important to you and your family — and can make a huge difference to charities for generations to come.
Bequests can be left to people, placed in trusts, or given in the form of a charitable bequest to charities or nonprofit organizations. Charity organizations can often significantly expand their operations and service more people or needs with the generosity of charitable bequests.
As a donor, there are many benefits to you for making a charitable bequest. In this piece, we’ll discuss the benefits of charitable bequests.
Making The Decision To Include A Charitable Bequest In Your Will
Some people leave a charitable bequest in their last will and testament out of a desire to do good in the world, even beyond their own lifetime.
However, donors also want to be selective about how they divide their estate so that it is utilized in the best way possible. Planning the specifics of what is going to happen to your estate after you pass can be a very rewarding, challenging, and perception-changing process.
This is an act of love and kindness, as you are gifting a great cause with funds to continue their life-changing work. However, deciding how to utilize your assets for something greater than yourself is also a great responsibility.
As people reach the age where they realize that it’s time to plan for what will happen to their estate in the future, they are also likely to begin to understand that there are some crucial and significant choices to be made about how their legacy will live on after they pass.
For many people, leaving a charitable bequest is a great choice that not only brings heartwarming emotional rewards, but also the ability to leave behind a great life legacy while minimizing tax liabilities.
All of this makes it a functional, financial decision that also brings a number of significant familial, emotional, and even spiritual benefits into the picture. Many nonprofit organizations rely on charitable funding from people who want to make a difference in the world for good to continue working and changing the world for the better.
Leave a Lasting Imprint on Hearts & Souls
you set us up as your messengers to replace difficulty and sadness with joy
for many years to come.
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Leave a Lasting Imprint on Hearts & Souls
With a charitable bequest to Rabbi Meir Baal Haness tzedakah in your will, you set us up as your messengers to replace difficulty and sadness with joy for many years to come.
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3 Benefits of Charitable Bequest Giving
1. The value of giving a meaningful gift with a lasting impact
As someone who’s interested in helping to make the world a better place, the lasting and powerful value of planning a charitable bequest gift serves as a means of fulfilling your own desire to use your estate in the best and most charitable manner possible.
As you make plans for the future of your estate, it’ll be rewarding for you and your family to know that the wealth you built for yourself over the course of your life will be used to further the cause of worthy charity organizations that are doing truly good work.
When all is said and done, we all want to know that our lives (and the fortunes we created during our lifetimes) will have served a meaningful, significant purpose.
Long-term gift planning, as is the nature of charitable bequest donations, can empower you to set yourself up for the rewards of giving. It empowers you with the ability to support a significant mission for generations—and to make an impact for decades to come.
By giving to such a significant cause, your planned gift will create a lasting legacy and ripple effect that will last well into the future, impacting future generations for countless decades and beyond.
2. Making a tribute to a family member empowers you to honor them through the memory of your gift
As you prepare your will, it may also make a lot of sense for you to make a tribute to a family member or loved one as a means of honoring them through a legacy gift.
Honoring one or more of your family members through a charitable bequest tribute could be an amazing way to show your loved ones that they mean a lot to you. It could also be an awesome way to show your appreciation to someone from the past, or even to bestow recognition upon someone (or even a group or organization) that you admire.
For example, you can arrange to leave a gift that will be dedicated in honor of your family name, in honor of the name of one of your children, in honor of a great-grandparent, or even in memory of a certain movement, organization, and/or individual.
This means of honoring your descendants through a charitable bequest can bring long-lasting benefits in the years, decades, and even centuries following your passing.
3. Tax deduction for charitable bequests
A charitable bequest serves as a powerful way to avoid the massive tax penalties your estate can incur when the financial blessing amassed during one’s lifetime gets distributed through the applicable legal channels after their death.
Under the 2023 federal law in the United States, an estate worth less than $12.92 million will not owe federal tax upon transfer. (This number is indexed for inflation so it changes from year to year.) Additionally, many states impose a separate gift and/or estate tax. For example New York State imposes its own estate tax for estates whose date of death value in 2023 is greater than $6.58 million.
In other words, $12.92 million (or less) is the amount of money you can transfer to your friends and family without paying federal transfer tax. However, as noted above, the state estate and or gift tax threshold is significantly lower in many states. Therefore, if you have more than $12.92 million in your estate, or $6.58 million in the State of New York, a charitable bequest can serve as a powerful tool for helping you to reduce your estate tax.
How?
There is an unlimited tax deduction for charitable bequests against the value of an estate. When you give through a charitable bequest, this reduces your tax liability for the amount of the gift.
To be eligible for this tax deduction for charitable bequests you can even set up your charitable bequest gift to be given in installments over the course of a certain period of time—which is basically the equivalent of making payments on a regular basis in the future.
In other words, charitable contributions will empower you to bring the blessings of charity to your family in the wake of your passing, as opposed to seeing a large percentage of your estate ‘disappear’ into large, needless tax payments.
Now Is The Time To Consider Including a Charitable Bequest In Your Will
Estate planning puts a legacy in motion. The results linger on for eternity, as an eternal blessing for the donor and their loved ones. Not just spiritually, but also from a financial and tax-benefit perspective as well.
For resources on putting together a charitable request for your own estate, check out this glossary of planned giving terms to help guide you in the process. We can also offer further guidance on the type of attorney for estate planning that can help you structure the type of bequest that is best suited for your needs.
As an organization that works to change lives for the better every single day, you may want to consider Rebbe Meir Baal Haness tzedakah as a beneficiary of your legacy gift. Our work as one of the primary Jewish charity organizations assisting the needy in Eretz Yisroel has been instrumental in changing lives. Our programs offer support and resources to the needy at every stage of the life cycle, whether it’s the new mother, orphan child, bride in need, large family struggling to put food on the table, or the sick and special needs individuals.
One of the most powerful tools at our disposal to make this possible is through charitable bequest donations from people who also want to make a huge difference in the world: People who are preparing for the ‘estate planning’ phase of life, who are considering a list of Jewish charities that they might want to include within that plan.
Please take advantage of our prayer donation options, whereby a dedicated
group of distinguished Torah scholars visit the burial place of Rabbi Meir Baal
Haness to invoke his merit on behalf of our supporters and beneficiaries.
Explore the Foundation of
a Meaningful Future
What is Planned Giving and What Are its Benefits?
Glossary of Planned
Giving Terms
Choosing the Right Type of Attorney for Estate Planning 
