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Giving Opportunities at The Cedars 

Monica Rice Cedars resized

Monica Rice

Director of Development and Constituent Relations

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Ways to Make a Current Gift

Whether you support The Cedars through unrestricted annual fund gifts or through gifts restricted for particular purposes, there are a number of ways to give. The Cedars’ procedures for making current gifts are outlined below. To explore deferred gifts and other special giving opportunities, read in detail below on ways to make a planned gift. Further, we outline an in-depth analysis of the asset types in which you can make gifts, both current and deferred.

By Check

Write your check to “The Cedars” and mail to:

Advancement Department
The Cedars Retirement Community
1021 Cedars Drive
McPherson, Kansas 67460

By Automatic Bank Withdrawal

To make regular gifts without writing a monthly check, have your bank automatically send your gift to The Cedars. If you wish to explore this method of giving, contact Cedars Advancement Office, advancement@thecedars.org or (620) 241-0919 for the forms needed to initiate this process.

By Credit Card

By Transfer from IRA

Since 2006, Congress has periodically authorized charitable giving by direct transfer from the donor’s IRA. In common parlance, it has somewhat imprecisely been referred to as a rollover, but technically is called a qualified charitable distribution (QCD).

From year to year, there have been minor variations in procedures and criteria, which always came with a termination date. However, in December 2015, Congress and the President made the QCD option permanent.

This process for charitable giving is available to donors age 70½ who have a traditional or a Roth individual retirement account. While the QCD may not be a high priority for everyone, even if they meet the age criterion, but if certain circumstances present themselves on your tax return, it can be very useful. Write to advancement@thecedars.org or call us for a conversation about whether your tax situation could benefit from the use of the QCD.

If you utilize this way of giving, please let us know the name and company of your IRA administrator.

By Transfer of Appreciated Securities

If you hold property that has increased in value since you acquired it—perhaps stocks, perhaps real estate—there may be a significant income tax advantage in using those assets to make a gift. If you have an interest in exploring this kind of gift with us, please contact us at advancement@thecedars.org or phone, (620) 241-0919. To learn more procedural details for donating appreciated stock, please contact us for specific instructions for you and your broker to expedite this process. We value gifts of securities at the average of the high and low exchange-traded price on the day the transfer appears in our account. Any time you give stock, please give us advance notice of the transfer. For instance, this includes approximate date, stock name or symbol, and the approximate number of shares.

Make a Gift, Leave a Legacy!

When we give to charitable causes, we enrich not only our own lives but those touched by our generosity. While planned gifts help for the future, gifts today help with our current operations and provide additional day-to-day support for our residents who are unable to pay fully for the care and support they need.

Many people choose to include charitable interests in their long-range estate planning. There are a number of ways to preserve the financial security of yourself and your family while also providing for your charitable causes. For more information on how to think about the relationship between your family and your charities, contact us.

Examples of planned gifts include:

Wills, Bequests, Testamentary Gifts

A gift to The Cedars in your will allows you to retain your assets during your lifetime and/or the life of your spouse. Designations may be for a percentage of your estate, for a specified dollar amount, or for specific property such as real estate.

If you have placed some or all of your assets in a revocable living trust, you can achieve the same result by making The Cedars a beneficiary in the testamentary sections of that trust.

Read below for suggestions on how to word a will or testamentary trust designation.

Gift that pays you income—Charitable Gift Annuity

A charitable gift annuity is a gift that gives back. It provides a way to make a gift to your favorite charity and still receive an income for yourself or others. By giving a lump sum (usually $10,000 or more) to The Cedars, you can receive an annual fixed percentage rate of return for life and it supports The Cedars while providing a nice rate of return for you. Read below for more details on Charitable Gift Annuities.

Designation from a Retirement Plan

Many retirement plans have provision for designating remaining balances in the plan at the demise of the plan holder. Because of income tax provisions related to “income in respect of a decedent” (IRD), there are key advantages to leaving retirement benefits to charity and other assets to the family rather than the other way around. If you have an interest in exploring what this might mean for you, please contact our advancement department at (620) 241-0919 or e-mail advancement@thecedars.org.

Moreover, this remainder benefit gift is different from the IRA “rollover” described as a current gifting strategy.

Gifting of Residual from Life Lease

Designating part or all of the residual of your life lease on an independent living unit at the Cedars is a wonderful way to make a significant gift back to the Cedars community. We would welcome a conversation with you about how such an arrangement could be coordinated.

Gifts that pay you income—Charitable Trusts

A Charitable Remainder Trust can provide income for you and/or your spouse while you are living. Thereafter, The Cedars can be named to receive the remainder of the assets. Additionally, other charities can be named as principal recipients as well. Further, there are several types of remainder trusts.

A Charitable Lead Trust is considered the opposite of a remainder trust—providing gift income to The Cedars for a period of time, then leaving the trust balance to the family. Moreover, this approach is useful to a relatively limited number of donors, but can be advantageous for certain business or personal circumstances.

Life Insurance

One possible use of life insurance in charitable gift planning is to make a direct gift of a policy to The Cedars. The face value of the policy makes a significant future gift for a manageable current cost, the annual premium payment.

Another way to use life insurance in gift planning is to establish a gift replacement policy. In this form, you make a substantial gift of property to The Cedars, then establish a life insurance policy to replace those assets for family, paying the premium with the tax saved in the charitable deduction.

Membership in the Cedars Heritage Society

You can be part of The Cedars' story by establishing a planned gift which offers membership in the Heritage Society. Please call (620) 241-0919 and ask for the vice president of advancement.

If you have questions about estate planning, consult your attorney, accountant, or financial planner.

Gifts That Pay You Income

There are several kinds of gift agreements that have the effect of helping you financially and also helping The Cedars.

Charitable Gift Annuity

The most common and most easily established of these “split interest” gifts is the charitable gift annuity. Moreover, the CGA is technically a contract between you and The Cedars in which you make a gift now, and The Cedars pays you a specified income for the rest of your life.

Key features include:

—You get a sizable current year tax deduction for the present value of the future gift that will come to The Cedars.
—Your periodic income payments will be a guaranteed set amount based on your age at the time the annuity is established.
—A major portion of your periodic income payments will be tax-free for a number of years, again determined by your age at the time the annuity is established.
—Your initial payment to establish the annuity is held by the Cedars to invest and to draw upon to cover your income payments for as long as you live. The remaining balance then becomes a gift to the Cedars. If you outlive the balance, The Cedars is obligated to pay you income anyway.

It takes only a few minutes for us to create an illustration of what the terms of an annuity would look like for you—payout rate, tax deduction, exclusion ratio (i.e., the tax-free portion of your income payments). In order to create an illustration for you, we need to know:

—Face amount with which you want to establish the annuity (we typically prefer $10,000 or above).
—Whether you want to fund the annuity with cash or with securities. If you are using securities to take advantage of the appreciated property rule, we will also need your basis in the securities.
—The frequency with which you want to receive payments – annual or semi-annual.
—Whether it is to be single individual annuity or joint.
—The birth date(s) of the person(s) who will receive the annuity payments.

If you e-mail the above information to us at advancement@thecedars.org, we can easily prepare an illustration and e-mail it back to you as a PDF file. If you prefer to meet with us to ask questions about variations and nuances not outlined above, we are happy to meet with you. Call us at (620) 241-0919.

Charitable Remainder Trust

There are two kinds of charitable remainder trusts – Charitable Remainder Unitrust (CRUT) and Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust (CRAT). These instruments are normally used for larger-sized gifts than the average charitable gift annuity described in the section above. While both pay income like the CGA does, there are some differences:

  • The CRUT and the CRAT require the drafting of a trust instrument that establishes the trust entity within which the assets will be managed and from which payments will be made.
  • Unlike the CGA, payments last only as long as the trust continues to maintain a balance. By contrast, the CGA constitutes a claim on Cedars assets even if your initial gift payment has been exhausted.
  • In the CRUT version, payments are recalculated every year based on the current market value of the assets supporting them. Hence, if the trust balance is growing, your payments will grow accordingly.

Charitable Lead Trust

A lead trust can be either an unitrust or an annuity trust version, which is similar to remainder trusts. However, a lead trust is the opposite of a remainder trust in the sense that it pays income to the charity for a period of years (typically around 17), then distributes the remaining trust balance back to the family. It is a fairly rare set of circumstances that makes the lead trust attractive, but if you have a closely held business or an appreciating asset from which current income is not critical but you want to preserve the asset for the future with certain tax advantages attached, this is an option that could be very useful to you.

Types of Assets

Check, cash, credit cards

A gift to The Cedars in your will allows you to retain your assets during your lifetime and/or the life of your spouse. Designations may be for a percentage of your estate, for a specified dollar amount, or for specific property such as real estate.

If you have placed some or all of your assets in a revocable living trust, you can achieve the same result by making The Cedars a beneficiary in the testamentary sections of that trust.

Contact us for suggestions on how to word your will or testamentary trust designation.

Gift that pays you income—Charitable Gift Annuity

A charitable gift annuity is a gift that gives back. It provides a way to make a gift to your favorite charity and still receive an income for yourself or others. By giving a lump sum (typically $10,000 or more) to The Cedars, you can receive an annual fixed percentage rate of return for life and it supports The Cedars while providing a nice rate of return for you. Contact us for more details on how a Charitable Gift Annuity works.

Retirement plans

A charitable gift annuity is a gift that gives back. It provides a way to make a gift to your favorite charity and still receive an income for yourself or others. By giving a lump sum (typically $10,000 or more) to The Cedars, you can receive an annual fixed percentage rate of return for life and it supports The Cedars while providing a nice rate of return for you. Contact us for more details on how a Charitable Gift Annuity works.

Life Insurance

Life insurance gifts can be in the form of a direct transfer of a paid-up policy to The Cedars or can also be a policy on which you are still paying premiums. In the latter case, the face value of the policy still makes a significant future gift for a manageable current cost, the annual premium payment.

Tangible personal property

Tangible personal property gifts can be in the form of jewelry, works of art, crops, and automobiles, to name a few. Moreover, these kinds of gifts are subject to special rules that govern valuation and/or availability of tax deductions. If you have an interest in a gift of this kind, please contact us for a more in-depth discussion of guidelines and procedures – advancement@thecedars.org or (620) 241-0919.

Real estate

Donations of real estate have been extremely helpful to The Cedars in the past. Gifts of real estate may offer the tax advantage of the appreciated property rule for deductibility similar to what is possible for gifts of securities described above.

If you have a parcel of real estate that you would consider giving to The Cedars, either in whole or as part of a “bargain sale” arrangement, we would be pleased to talk with you about how that could be done. If the nature of your donated property is such that The Cedars would likely want to sell it, please contact us before you would make any gestures toward identifying a possible buyer for the property. There is a special tax deduction rule that makes it important that you not move toward what tax provisions would call a “pre-arranged sale.”

Residual value in independent living life lease

Designating part or all of the residual of your life lease on an independent living unit at the Cedars is a wonderful way to make a significant gift back to the Cedars community. We would welcome a conversation with you about how such an arrangement could be worked out.

Giving Appreciated Securities

If you have securities that have appreciated since you acquired them, they represent an especially tax-efficient way to make a gift to The Cedars if you give the shares directly to us without selling them. Under tax law, you are permitted to take a deduction for the current market value of the security without recognizing gain in the process.

Cedars Heritage Society

From our modest beginnings near Darlow, Kansas nearly 125 years ago, The Cedars has relied on the generosity and foresight of individuals and churches who believed in our simple mission: to provide comprehensive health and wellness services and quality living options in a compassionate, Christian environment. Since 1893, thousands of residents, church members, business owners, and friends have volunteered their time and shared their financial resources to ensure our ongoing ability to fulfill that mission.

The Cedars have a wonderful group of donors who contribute on a monthly or annual basis. We also enjoy support from a special group of people who have taken the extra step to leave a legacy that will survive themselves, donors who have remembered The Cedars in their estate planning. This is the group the Heritage Society was established to recognize.

Heritage Society planned or deferred gifts may take any of several forms: 

  • Designating a dollar amount or percentage of the overall value of your estate to The Cedars, either through your will or your revocable living trust.
  • Establishing gift instruments that pay you income, such as a Charitable Gift Annuity, a Charitable Remainder Unitrust, or a Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust.
  • Naming The Cedars as a beneficiary on a life insurance policy.
  • Designating all or a portion of the termination value of your retirement plan to the Cedars.
  • Leaving part or all of the reimbursement value of your life-lease in the Village to The Cedars.

Although it is not necessary to advise The Cedars of your planned gift, we welcome the opportunity to express our gratitude personally to you. Even though public recognition of Heritage Society members may encourage and inspire others to consider such a gift, we will honor requests for anonymity.

Contact Us Today

In addition to services tailored to Independent Senior Living residents, The Cedars offers Assisted Living, Healthcare Living, and other arrangements for residents who may require special care, and we can accommodate your changing housing needs as you age. To learn more about The Cedars or to schedule a tour of our campus, call us at 620-241-0919.

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