I know this isn’t new – Giving USA 2011 #’s came out in June – but it is definitely something that the planned giving world should take note of.

I’ve never been a fan of estate tax repeal.  Since a very high percentage of charitable bequests globally come from the potential U.S. estate tax payers (for example, in 2009, 75% of charitable bequest dollars came from those with estates of $3.5 million or greater), I thought we might see a huge dip in bequest revenue in 2010 with the one year repeal.

Turns out that my concerns were unfounded.  Giving USA reports that  charitable bequests in 2010 came in at $22.82 billion.  Not only a typical year, but an increase from the previous year of a few billion dollars (not that I put much faith in comparing years for bequest purposes since timing of bequests is based on hard to predict factors – i.e. death!).

Here is link to Giving USA’s website to get their reports: http://www.aafrc.org/gusa/gusa_order.cfm

I think the immediate take-away from this piece of news is that estate tax or not, charitable bequests will come in.