Most Rich People Give While Alive, but Less Often in Bequests
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
September 18, 2018 | Read Time: 1 minute
Title: Patterns of Giving by the Wealthy
Organization: Urban Institute
Summary: While almost all rich people give to charity during their lifetimes, most of them don’t make charitable contributions when they die.
When such donors do give to nonprofits in their wills, those bequests are on average much larger than the gifts they gave over their last few years of life, even though giving while they were alive would have almost always reduced their total tax burden.
Additional findings from the study, which compared the estate-tax returns with the income tax of wealthy donors who died in 2007:
- Total estate giving among all gender and age groups in 2007 was greater than total giving in the five years (2002 through 2006) before their death.
- The data suggest that better appeals focused on planned giving could significantly increase donations to charities from wealthy philanthropists.
