Life Insurance: Expand Your Charitable Reach
Life insurance is a tool with many purposes. Perhaps when your children were young, you purchased policies to provide them with financial protection. But if your situation has changed, you might be interested in one of the more satisfying uses for life insurance you no longer need—donating it to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
A gift of life insurance has many perks:
Cost Efficient
You can make a significant gift even if your means are limited today. By making small premium payments each year, you can leave a sizable gift.
Tax Beneficial
For existing policies, you may receive an income tax charitable deduction if you itemize. For a new policy, with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra as owner and beneficiary, premiums may be deductible.
Secure and Confidential
Life insurance is a contract and can’t be changed by heirs. If you make the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra policy owner and beneficiary, it’s not included in probate and remains confidential.
Helpful to Our Mission
Life insurance gives you a low cost option to make a gift, helping you to make a bigger impact on our work than you may have thought possible.
3 Ways to Arrange
a Life Insurance Gift
Give an Existing Policy
When you name the MSO as the policy owner and beneficiary, you qualify for a federal income tax charitable deduction for the lower of the policy’s fair market value or your cost basis. For paid-up insurance, the fair market value is the cost of replacing the coverage with a new policy issued today based on the current age of the insured at the same face amount as the original policy.
If premiums are still payable on the policy, the fair market value is usually close to the cash surrender value. You may stipulate to us that you wish to no longer make future premium payments, allowing us to access the surrender value immediately for our cash needs.
An alternative, however, may be even more attractive. The policy can remain ours and will stay in force so that someday we receive the original face amount. You pledge to make yearly cash gifts to the MSO, which we will use to pay the premiums. The gifts are deductible if you itemize, and the policy is thereby kept in force with pre-tax instead of after-tax dollars for a lower actual cost.
3 Ways to Arrange
a Life Insurance Gift
Retain Ownership of an Existing Policy and Name Us as a Beneficiary
If you would rather retain ownership of a policy for your own financial security or that of others, you have the following options:
- Name us as the sole or partial primary beneficiary of the policy, leaving any balance to your heirs. Because you retain ownership of the policy, you have the right to change the beneficiary at any time in any way you wish.
- Name the MSO as the contingent beneficiary, so we receive the death benefits only if your primary beneficiary predeceases you.
- Create a separate trust named to receive the death benefits, with terms providing for the financial support for one or more named loved ones for a specific term of years or for life, after which the trust terminates and its assets pass to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
Purchase a New Policy for Future Charitable Gifts
In most states, you can enter into a new insurance contract with a qualified organization such as the MSO as the beneficiary and owner of the policy.