Legacy gifts provide future support for COD and significantly alter students’ lives. Contributions by will, trust, life-income arrangements, and endowment gifts all represent generous forms of legacy giving. These gifts represent powerful and meaningful ways for individuals to create a philanthropic legacy for their community and the organizations they care about. We encourage you to take advantage of the many tax benefits of making a planned gift.

The Benefits of Making Bequests

A bequest is one of the most popular and flexible gifts to make. With the help of an advisor, you can include language in your will or trust specifying a gift be made to family, friends and COD as part of your estate plan.

• You leave a lasting legacy to be remembered.
• You lessen the burden of taxes on your family.
• You may receive estate tax savings.

A bequest can be made in several ways:

• You can gift a specific dollar amount or asset.
• You can gift a percentage of your estate.
• You can make a gift from the balance or residue of your estate.
• You can make a beneficiary designation of certain assets.

Charitable Gift Annuity

You may be tired of living at the mercy of the fluctuating stock and real estate markets. A charitable gift annuity is a gift made to the COD Foundation that can provide you with a secure source of fixed payments for life.

Benefits include:

• Receive fixed payments to you or another annuitant you designate for life.
• Receive a charitable income tax deduction for the charitable gift portion of the annuity.
• Benefit from payments that may be partially tax-free.
• Further our mission to enhance the quality of education by advancing COD.

How a Charitable Gift Annuity Works:

• You transfer cash or property to College of the Desert Foundation.
• In exchange, we promise to pay fixed payments to you for life. The payment can be quite high depending on your age, and a portion of each payment may even be tax-free.
• You will receive a charitable income tax deduction for the gift portion of the annuity.
• You also receive satisfaction, knowing that you will be helping to further our mission.

If you decide to fund your Gift Annuity with cash, a significant portion of the annuity payment will be tax-free. You may also make a gift of appreciated securities to fund a gift annuity and avoid a portion of the capital gains tax.

IRA Charitable Rollover

If you are 70½ or older, an IRA charitable rollover is a way you can help continue our work and also receive a tax benefit this year.

• Avoid taxes on transfers of up to $100,000 from your IRA to the COD Foundation.
• Satisfy your required minimum distribution (RMD) for the year.
• Reduce your taxable income, even if you do not itemize deductions.
• Make a gift that is not subject to the deduction limits on charitable gifts.
• Help further the work and mission of the COD Foundation.

How an IRA Charitable Rollover gift works:

• Contact your IRA plan administrator to make a gift from your IRA to us.
• Your IRA funds will be directly transferred to the COD Foundation to help continue our important work.
• Please note that IRA charitable rollover gifts do not qualify as a charitable deduction.
• Please contact us if you wish for your gift to be used for a specific purpose.