The Smarter Generosity Podcast
Sep 16, 2026 · 17 min · 7 segments
What if you could make a meaningful charitable gift while also receiving a lifetime income stream? In this episode, Eric Fleshood and Katie Brubaker explore charitable gift annuities (CGAs), how they…
And you started off explaining that it's a contract where the donor would give a certain amount of money and then they get payment from that.
And then, so where does the gift part come in? Walk us through that charitable gift annuity piece and kind of the order of how all that works.
So with a charitable gift annuity, there are inside of it there are two components one is set aside and reserved to help pay that income that the charity is contractually obligated to pay that donor for the rest of their life and then part of the gift is set aside for future use by the charity so there's a gift component and then there's the actual annuity component within that and so the the charity is using actually part of the donor's gift as well as other assets from the charity to fulfill its obligation to provide that income stream for the donor's lifetime.
But these gifts are so wonderful because they also, as I said, there's a charitable gift component built into it.
And so over time, over the donor's lifetime, the gift component inside that charitable gift annuity grows.
And when the donor no longer needs those gift annuity payments, whatever remains from that annuity inside the annuity now is able to be used by the charity.
So during the donor's lifetime, One of the purposes is to provide income to the donor.
But once the donor is done with those income payments, the second purpose kicks in, and that is an immediate gift to
I mean, this doesn't sound like something that everybody should run out and do necessarily.
So paint the picture of somebody that this would be the perfect solution for what they're looking for.
Well, what we've seen most often is people who are facing a change in their income.
Most often that comes in the form of, hey, I'm moving into retirement, so I'm no longer in the workforce or, you know, I'm moving into a different phase of life.
And so that oftentimes gets people thinking, well, gosh, I might need to trim back on my budget.
And you started off explaining that it's a contract where the donor would give a certain amount of money and then they get payment from that.
And then, so where does the gift part come in? Walk us through that charitable gift annuity piece and kind of the order of how all that works.
So with a charitable gift annuity, there are inside of it there are two components one is set aside and reserved to help pay that income that the charity is contractually obligated to pay that donor for the rest of their life and then part of the gift is set aside for future use by the charity so there's a gift component and then there's the actual annuity component within that and so the the charity is using actually part of the donor's gift as well as other assets from the charity to fulfill its obligation to provide that income stream for the donor's lifetime.
But these gifts are so wonderful because they also, as I said, there's a charitable gift component built into it.
And so over time, over the donor's lifetime, the gift component inside that charitable gift annuity grows.
And when the donor no longer needs those gift annuity payments, whatever remains from that annuity inside the annuity now is able to be used by the charity.
So during the donor's lifetime, One of the purposes is to provide income to the donor.
But once the donor is done with those income payments, the second purpose kicks in, and that is an immediate gift to
I mean, this doesn't sound like something that everybody should run out and do necessarily.
So paint the picture of somebody that this would be the perfect solution for what they're looking for.
Well, what we've seen most often is people who are facing a change in their income.
Most often that comes in the form of, hey, I'm moving into retirement, so I'm no longer in the workforce or, you know, I'm moving into a different phase of life.
And so that oftentimes gets people thinking, well, gosh, I might need to trim back on my budget.
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