Gifts from you IRA

If you are 72 or older, your IRA is forcing out income that will be taxed at your highest rate. If you intend to make a gift to Trout Unlimited, consider making it directly from your IRA. Your Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) counts toward your required minimum distribution (RMD) but is not included in your income. You may give up to $100,000 in QCDs each year.

Benefits of a Qualified Charitable Distribution

• You can transfer up to $100,000 that would otherwise be subject to income tax and could affect the taxation of your social security, your capital gains rate and tax on Medicare.
• Avoids the deduction limitations for charitable gifts.
• Counts toward your Required Minimum Distribution.
• Available to anyone with an IRA who is over 70½. Note that there are limitations if you continue to make contributions to an IRA.
• Reduce or eliminate eventual income tax burden if left to individual heirs.

How a Qualified Charitable Distribution works

• If you have check writing privileges on your IRA, simply send a check to:
  

  Trout Unlimited Inc.
  1777 N. Kent St., Suite 100
  Arlington, VA, 22209

• If you do not have check writing privileges on your IRA, contact your IRA plan administrator to make a gift from your IRA to us.
• Instruct your administrator to transfer the amount you wish to give directly to Trout Unlimited. Provide our legal name and Tax ID number:

  Trout Unlimited Inc.
  1777 N. Kent St., Suite 100
  Arlington, VA, 22209
  Federal Tax ID #38-1612715

• Your IRA funds will be directly transferred to Trout Unlimited to help continue our important work.
• Please contact us if you wish for your gift to be used for a specific purpose.
• CAVEAT: A gift from your IRA can never be used to acquire premiums offered by TU.

Contact us

If you have any questions about a Qualified Charitable Distribution, please contact us. We would be happy to work with you and your advisors to answer any questions you might have.

Generous Gifts for Conservation-Today and Tomorrow

By Bill Jones, TU Stream Guardian

Early in my career I realized that pension plans were not necessarily reliable, and Social Security would not be enough to live on.  Contributing to an IRA was like using money I would have paid the government in taxes to fund our retirement plan, so my wife and I contributed what we could to fund IRAs over our careers.

We have been very fortunate in life that those investments worked better than anticipated and we were able to retire early. When I hit 70½ and faced mandatory withdrawals, I didn't actually need that income.   Fortunately, I learned I could transfer my required minimum distributions (RMD) from my IRA directly to charity.  Instead of paying the government the taxes due on those funds, I could support Trout Unlimited.  My donation counts toward my RMD, and those funds are removed from income tax, Social Security and Medicare considerations. Given the choice between paying taxes or supporting TU, I choose TU!

My IRA administrator allows me to write checks directly from my IRA, so donating to Trout Unlimited is easy: I write the check and put it in the mail.  Done. Designating TU as a beneficiary of an IRA is also easy using a beneficiary designation form provided by your IRA administrator.  Providing for TU in my will was a little more complicated and involved an attorney, but having a will is a necessary part of anyone's estate and financial planning process.  Deciding to include TU in that process was the easy part.

I am still relatively young and while I may exhaust that IRA during my lifetime, any funds left in my IRA will go to Trout Unlimited and other charities. If my IRA is depleted or exhausted, my will provides that a minimum amount will go to Trout Unlimited.

Not long ago I was fortunate to tour the Trout Unlimited restoration effort on the Yankee Fork side channel of the Salmon River near Stanley, Idaho.  Project manager Carrie Wood was incredibly eloquent and effective in conveying the physical and mental resources required for this type of project, and the tour was an eye-opener to what TU accomplishes with relatively little resources.  I am delighted to continue contributing to these successes whenever possible during my lifetime, and then after I'm gone with whatever's left over. 

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