Gift planning
Planned giving is a very special tool of philanthropy. It's reserved
for those individuals and families with both clear vision and a sense
of deep conviction—with an eye on both the near term and the
long term.
Whatever form your planned gift takes, keep in mind that it is a wonderful way to support MIT’s endowment. (Read more about why our healthy endowment is so crucial.) It also can offer great benefits to you.
When you make a planned gift to MIT of a charitable annuity or trust, you and/or your beneficiaries will receive payments for life (or for a pre-specified term of years). This helps you provide for your family during retirement, and can be a very attractive option for donors who are looking for ways to guarantee a yearly income for someone over the age of 55—a loved one or themselves—while still benefiting the Institute. Upon the death of the last surviving beneficiary, remaining funds are transferred to MIT and are used for the purposes specified by the donor.
Or, you may decide, as have many donors, that the most significant
expression of your life values can be made through another form of planned
gift to MIT—a charitable bequest.
Planned giving options include:
- charitable remainder trusts, which allow you to transfer
assets into a trust that will provide you and/or your beneficiaries
with payments for life;
- charitable gift annuities, to
which you make a contribution in return for MIT’s promise to
pay one or two annuitants a fixed income for life; and
- deferred gift annuities, which
are similar to charitable gift annuities except that your payments
are deferred.
To further explore the benefits of making a planned gift to MIT, please
contact MIT’s Office of
Gift Planning at gift_planning@mit.edu or
617.253.6463.
20/20 clarity
Glen Dorflinger ’46
Glen Dorflinger ’46 doesn’t do anything half-heartedly.
He’s launched not one or two but seven companies, including
Partners for International Development in Houston, with which he’s
still active.
He has no plans to retire, quickly ticks off his four favorite athletic
outlets (tennis, rollerblading, swimming, and sail boarding), and has volunteered
in several capacities for MIT—including as a member of the Corporation.
Having made more than one generous gift to establish charitable remainder
unitrusts at MIT—for example, the Glen and Phyllis Dorflinger Unitrust—he
will tell you that life income funds (that is, planned gifts in the form
of annuities or trusts) are his preferred gift vehicle. He says they benefit
the Institute while simultaneously offering him both tax breaks and quarterly
income.
Not surprisingly, Dorflinger also has 20/20 clarity on his response to
the question, Why does MIT need my gift, anyway?
“People often say that MIT has all the money in the world. I don’t
feel that way,” he says. “MIT is a world treasure. Because it’s
at the forefront of so many areas, it has great significance. I think it’s
important in life to support MIT because of what it means to humanity.” [ top ] |
