Planned Giving

You have several good options for passing your retirement plan assets to us:

Beneficiary Designation: The simplest and most common way to give retirement plan assets is to make Robin Hood a beneficiary of your retirement plan. All you need to do is to file a revised beneficiary designation form with your retirement plan administrator to designate our organization as a beneficiary of your plan and name the percentage of your remaining assets that you want us to receive. The retirement plan assets that you designate for us will avoid all income tax and estate tax. In order for your estate to enjoy both of these tax benefits, it is especially important that you make our organization the designated beneficiary of these retirement plan assets, not your estate. Please be sure to use our legal name on the form: Robin Hood Foundation.

Life Income Plan: Prior to the passage of the SECURE Act in 2020, inherited IRAs could stretch out their taxable distributions over the life expectancy of your heirs. The SECURE Act requires an inherited IRA to distribute all of its assets within 10 years. With the elimination of the stretch IRA, an attractive option for planning (so that inherited retirement plan assets can pay income for life) is to designate a charitable remainder trust or charitable gift annuity as the beneficiary of your retirement plan. Passing assets to us through a life income plan allows you to provide income to your loved ones after you are gone as well as provide support to Robin Hood. Such a plan strikes a balance between leaving the entirety of your retirement plan assets to loved ones subject to significant taxation and leaving all of these assets to us and eliminating taxes on them altogether. Here’s how a life income plan works:

• Your retirement plan transfers the designated portion of its final balance to a charitable remainder trust or a charitable gift annuity.
• The heirs you have chosen receive payments from the plan each year, typically for life.
• When the life income plan ends, its remaining principal goes to support Robin Hood.

Using retirement plan assets to fund a life income plan spreads out income tax and reduces estate tax on these assets, if your estate is subject to estate taxes. This typically results in a reduction of the total taxes on your retirement assets by more than half compared to distributing them to your heirs through your estate.

Life Income Plan Options: There are several life income plan options to choose from. The one that is right for you will depend on a variety of factors. Please contact us if you would like to learn more about funding a life income plan with assets from your retirement plan.

If you don’t itemize your income tax deductions, a QCD provides the tax benefits of an itemized income tax charitable deduction. If you are age 73 and must take a required minimum distribution, your QCD gift can satisfy your RMD without increasing your income taxes. Your gift provides immediate support for the important work of Robin Hood with a tax-free gift. Your estate is entitled to an unlimited estate tax charitable deduction for the value of your qualified retirement plan donated to Robin Hood. Since Robin Hood is tax-exempt, there will be no income taxes paid on the distribution to Robin Hood. A tax-smart estate planning strategy is to contribute taxable Qualified Retirement Plan assets to Robin Hood and preserve non-retirement plan assets for your heirs. Note: Directing your qualified retirement plan to charitable and noncharitable beneficiaries can accelerate the income tax. Always consult with your advisers before naming the beneficiaries of your qualified retirement plan.