Planned Giving

Planned Giving through Your Estate
If you want your devotion to animals to continue after you are gone, then please consider including Canine Assistants in your will. Your gift to support our service dogs and their recipients is a perfect way to assure that your love of animals will live on. These donations are not only extremely helpful to our mission, but they are also tax deductible and therefore potentially a financial benefit to your estate. This information is not intended to serve as legal or tax advice. You should consider using a lawyer when planning for your will or estate.
If you would like to include Canine Assistants in your will, it is quick and easy to do. You can simply copy the following paragraphs to use in your will, or if you have already written your will, you can use the second section below to amend your existing will.

Include Canine Assistants, Inc. in your will:

“I bequeath to Canine Assistants, Inc., 3160 Francis Road Milton, GA 30004, the sum of ___ dollars.”

Amend your will to include Canine Assistants, Inc.:

“I hereby amend my last will and testament executed on ___day of ___ in the year ___.  I direct that all provisions of that will remain in effect, and in addition, I bequeath to Canine Assistants, Inc., 3160 Francis Road Milton, GA 30004, the sum of ___ dollars.” (A codicil changing your residuary estate will require you to make other adjustments.  Your attorney will advise you.)

Communicate your desire for your family and friends to honor your memory with a donation to your memorial by requesting your family include the following in your obituary: “It was the wish of the deceased that donations be sent to (his or her) Canine Assistants Memorial in lieu of flowers.”

What is Planned Giving through your estate?
Planned giving is the best way to assure that your love of animals lives on after you are gone. To make your charitable giving dollar really count, you can choose to fund the future of Canine Assistants with your estate planning. Making a gift to our organization is one of the most effective ways to ensure that your legacy lives on in our mission to teach service dogs to help those with physical and medical disabilities.
Canine Assistants invites you to join other supporters who have already acted to ensure the future of our organization by including Canine Assistants in their estate plans as a beneficiary to their retirement plan or insurance policy.

Either of the above two options may benefit your heirs through avoidance of substantial income and estate taxes. Here is more information on these two examples…

Retirement Plans
Retirement plan assets are one of the best assets to use for charitable gifts. You can create a legacy by naming Canine Assistants, Inc. as beneficiary or contingent beneficiary of an IRA, 401(k), 403(b), or other qualified retirement plan. After your lifetime, all or a portion of the unused balance in your account is transferred to us as a charitable gift.
When a retirement account is left to a charity such as Canine Assistants, the non-profit organization does not pay the income tax otherwise due if left to a friend or non-spouse family member. All you have to do is complete a change of beneficiary form, which may be obtained from your plan administrator.

Insurance Policies
If you no longer need life insurance that was purchased years ago to provide for children or other family members, please consider donating the policy, or even a percentage of your life insurance policy, to Canine Assistants. How could this benefit your estate? You may claim a charitable deduction for approximately the policy’s cash surrender value.
You can also create a legacy by naming Canine Assistants as the beneficiary or contingent beneficiary of your life insurance policy. All you need to do is to complete a change of beneficiary form with the insurance company and you can change your mind at any time by updating this form.

What Can I Do While I Am Still Here?

Charitable Remainder Annuities and Unitrusts
Charitable Remainder Annuities and Trusts allow you to set up a trust that will ultimately benefit Canine Assistants, while providing you with current income. To do this, you make an irrevocable (tax-deductible) donation of $100,000 or more in your name. With a charitable remainder unitrust, your payment rate is fixed at 5% or more, but the amount fluctuates based on the value of the trust each year.  With a charitable remainder annuity trust your payment amount is fixed at 5% or more and does not fluctuate through time. In both cases, you have assured a future for Canine Assistants in a trust under your name.

Life Income Plans
Life income plans may provide significant income tax savings and favorable capital gains tax treatment on gifts of appreciated property. Life income plans allow you to support our organization while at the same time receiving an income for the remainder of your life.

Real Estate as a Gift
You can give your residence, vacation home, acreage, farm or unimproved parcel of land and still retain use of it so that you and your family can continue to use it for the rest of your lives while obtaining significant tax and estate planning benefits. A residence may have appreciated so significantly in value that its sale by you would generate a substantial income tax burden. By making a gift of a full or partial interest in real estate to Canine Assistants, you will avoid tax on the long-term capital gain and generate an income tax charitable deduction for the full fair market value of the property.

Charitable Gift Annuities
A charitable gift annuity allows you to benefit from an income tax deduction and also may provide capital gains and estate tax benefits. A charitable gift annuity must be at least $5,000 per person. In exchange for this gift, Canine Assistants provides guaranteed, fixed payments to you for the rest of your life. Upon your death, the remainder of the gift will support the work of Canine Assistants.

Contact Canine Assistants:
If you would like more information, or would like to let us know that you have already included Canine Assistants in your estate planning, please contact us at kizzy.marco@canineassistants.org

Canine Assistants, Inc. is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization as determined by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service. Our federal tax ID number is 58-1974410.