If you had signed the Planned Giving Resources Guestbook, requesting that we notify you when changes were made to the State Regulations of Charitable Gift Annuities, we sent you this communication on 6-12-2000 and also to those who signed up between that date and the date this was posted to this page of the site.

This is an update of the info found at the button in the lower right corner of the PGResources Welcome page, at "New York Gift Annuities - Action Needed".

1) If you write charitable gift annuities with residents of the State of NEW YORK, or plan to do so, or would like to do so...or your organization is based in NEW YORK, you will want to know that the New York Insurance Law has just been changed by the New York State Legislature. New York Law governs the investment rules of your entire ANNUITY FUND if you are based in New York or have any New York State annuitants.

2) On Thursday, (6-8-00), the New York Assembly passed the Assembly Bill #9673, to RAISE the Required Reserve amount of a charitable gift annuity fund containing New York annuitants, AFTER which a charity must file for a permit, from $80,000 to $500,000. That figure is for the size of the entire gift annuity fund, not the amount of New York State annuities. That is also the new threshold at which a charity will obtain a permit, even if it files with NO annuitants in its fund... The size of the whole Fund would be about $800,000, and varies by the Fund, since it is based on the total of the Reserves required by ALL the annuitants in the Fund (not just the New York annuitants).

3) This Bill has gone back to the Senate to make sure that its wording was not changed. The Senate passed it last year. Since there was NO CHANGE in the wording, it has now gone to the Governor for his signature. That will probably happen in a few days. (As of this writing [7/6/00], it has NOT yet been signed, but his staff is sure there will be NO problem in it being signed in due course.) We will post its signing to the website after the fact.

4) Once that becomes the law, we will then start the process of trying to get the legislature to consider changing the INVESTMENT RULES from one requiring a heavy reliance on U.S. Treasuries (with a very limited total return investment goal) to the more liberal Prudent Investor Rule of investing for Total Return, as adopted by Maryland in recent years.

5) Thank you for your collective efforts in getting us to this point. Your "cards and letters" (and e-mails and faxes) carried the day with the New York Legislators. They heard you! Without your efforts, it just would not have happened.

6) In a couple of months, (possibly by the Fall of 2000), we will start the process of working with the leadership to affect this investment change in the New York Insurance Law. We hope we will be successful by the end of the next session, ending about June/July, in the legislative year 2001. We will keep you posted.

7) If you would like to do ONE MORE THING that will have an impact on the legislators (with the idea that they will remember the issue when we next approach them with the request to change the investment rules), is to write to THANK them for passing the Bill A9673 (Charitable Gift Annuities).

8) Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's fax number is (518) 455-5459 and his e-mail address is: speaker@assembly.state.ny.us

9) For original information about getting involved in changing this New York State Law that was posted on this page from 4/9/2000 through 7/6/2000, Click here.

10) NEW INFO: A fifteen (15) page presentation on the "Administration of Gift Annuities" (covering more than 40 subjects), gathered over my 30 years of administering gift annuity funds, and presented to the 24th Conference on Gift Annuities in St. Louis, MO on April 28, 2000 is now on this web site for you to print out and use. Click here for the complete text.

11) This Website contains a lot of useful information. You will want to be sure you have seen the information on the "New Info", "State Regulations (Summary Report)", and "Order Form" buttons on this site. All that information is yours for the viewing, printing and using, gratis.

12)  And signing up for the "Guestbook" will get you an e-mail message (perhaps one every month or two) notifying you any time there is a change to this website (primarily in the area of the State Regulations of Charitable Gift Annuities.)