Philanthropy Today

Charitable giving hit a record $617 billion — and almost everyone read it wrong. Bequests, barely a tenth of all giving, drove a third of the growth, powered by a handful of estates and a market that inflated them. This isn’t generosity spreading. It’s wealth concentrating. The money is moving into a few institutions that keep getting stronger, while the corner nonprofit gets crowded out. A wealth transfer, yes — but mostly a power transfer.

You’ve given to this cause for years. Now you’re weighing something far larger — a bequest from your estate. But a planned gift isn’t simply a bigger check, and a charity that can ask for one isn’t always built to receive it. Before you sign, learn the questions that reveal whether your charity is genuinely ready for your legacy — or merely ready to request it.

Twenty-one articles about Hampshire College’s closure. Not one uses the words “planned giving” or “endowment.” The press wrote a eulogy. Here is the autopsy: a board that shrank a $40 million endowment during the longest bull market in history, ate the principal at 9 percent draws, and never built the bequest pipeline that would have made any of this survivable.