How To Get More Bang From Your Charitable Buck

As the first in his family to attend college, Bill Martin ’58 earned an electrical engineering degree and credits Texas A&M University with being a foundational part of his life.“Any advantage my wife, Ann, and I received was due to Texas A&M,” he said. “It was more than an education; it was a cultural experience that enabled our futures — and the world opened up to us because of those years.”
 

After Bill’s rewarding career with Texas Instruments, the Martins considered ways to pay their success forward and developed a philanthropic strategy to maximize their charitable contributions and overall impact on Texas A&M. “We’ve utilized our annual IRA qualified charitable distributions to provide immediate support to the university,” Bill said, who added that they’ve stretched their money’s reach by tapping into Texas Instruments’ charitable matching program. “We also knew we’d eventually be gone and didn’t have plans for our estate. We wanted to leave part of it to the Texas A&M Foundation to benefit Texas A&M, but we weren’t sure what our future needs would be.”
 

That’s where the Martins carefully identified the best planned giving method for them: charitable gift annuities (CGAs). Becoming big fans of this giving vehicle, they’ve used cash and appreciated stock to establish nine CGAs — the largest number created by a former student. “The charitable annuity provides us annual payments, which means money is still available to us while we’re alive,” said Bill, who retired as Texas Instruments’ vice president in 1992. “When we’re gone, that asset benefits the university. It meets our needs and the school’s needs, so we think it’s an effective use of our assets.”