Since 2006, the IRA Charitable Rollover provision has allowed anyone age 70-and-1/2 or older to transfer up to $100,000 to causes like Ploughshares Fund tax-free. Just this week the Senate passed a bill to make the IRA Charitable Rollover provision permanent. If you act now, there is still time to make your IRA charitable rollover gift before the end of 2015.
In light of this important decision we share the story of long-time donor Alan Appleford, 86, of Oakland, California. In late 2007, Appleford parlayed a 43-year-career with Bechtel Corporation into a $40,000 tax-free gift to Ploughshares Fund through his Bechtel-funded IRA.
Appleford asked for information on the IRA Charitable Rollover Act then made the IRA transfer, taking care that the check went directly from his IRA custodian to Ploughshares Fund.
“In my high school and college years I was involved with issues of social justice and peace through the Congregational Church,” he said. “The church was concerned about the use of the atomic bomb in World War II. It was a quiet voice, but it was there. It’s part of my way of looking at the world.”
Growing up in the Berkeley hills, the son of staunchly conservative parents, Appleford’s penchant for peace and justice blossomed into quiet financial support for causes like the ACLU and women’s rights, population control and ecological and global warming concerns. The Ploughshares Fund newsletter, received years ago, made him a steady contributor.
Almost drafted into the Marines during the Korean War, he went through two physicals before being rejected because of near-sightedness. “I joined Bechtel in 1951, three days after I received my BA in civil engineering,” he said. He remained at Bechtel his entire career except for a year off at MIT for further studies, retiring in 1994.
“My work at Bechtel was almost exclusively with nuclear power,” he said. “A couple of times I was asked to get into programs to build weapons facilities, and I said no.”
Last year, the US Congress waited until mid-December to approve tax-free IRA contributions for 2014 to public nonprofit organizations, leaving some donors without time to make gifts from their IRA’s.
This year, Congress made it a permanent provision.
For more information on IRA charitable rollovers and how they can benefit you, contact Ploughshares Fund Director of Development Samara Dun at 415-668-2244 or sdun@ploughshares.org.
