This information will help guide you in a decision to create a legacy gift for the National Motorists Association, providing resources to help the NMA protect drivers’ rights for generations to come.

Please contact the NMA by telephone at 608-849-6000, by email at NMA@motorists.org, or by the postal service at 1001 Arboretum Dr., Ste. 120, Waunakee, WI 53597 with any questions about the information presented here, or about any aspect of the Planned Giving Program.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Section 1       The NMA Visionary Society

Details are provided on how to become a member of this exclusive group of the NMA’s most significant contributors.

Section 2      Building Our Future with You!

A variety of gifting options are presented for your consideration.

Section 3      Bequests

Three types of bequests — outright, conditional, and restricted — are explained. Suggested language for a range of bequest clauses is provided.

Confidential Bequest Form

Return this form to the NMA to share your intention to include the NMA in your estate plans. The information is helpful for our future resource planning. It also allows us to recognize your generosity at the time you make your non-binding pledge.

Section 4     What Your Legacy Will Stand For

In order to provide a legacy gift to an advocacy organization, a philanthropist will want to know that the current goals of the organization will be carried into the future. This section presents some of the key motorists’ issues that the NMA has been tackling for decades and will continue to fight for as long as there are individual drivers navigating our nation’s highways.

 

 

Section 1

 

The NMA Visionary Society

 

The National Motorists Association established the Visionary Society to formally recognize the valuable role of contributors to the cause of motorists’ rights through donations to the NMA. Members of the NMA Visionary Society have donated $2,500 or more cumulatively over the years, either by direct contributions of cash, other assets, or by bequest of a future gift.

Membership levels within the Visionary Society are evaluated annually. New members to the Society, or those who have reached higher giving levels, are recognized with a certificate of membership memorializing their level of philanthropy and support for motorists’ rights.

The member levels of the Visionary Society are:

Level of Cumulative Giving       Visionary Club Level
            $     2,500     to     $     9,999       Benefactor
            $  10,000     to      $  24,999       Benefactor Cum Laude
            $  25,000     to     $   49,999       Benefactor Magna Cum Laude
            $  50,000     to     $   99,999       Benefactor Summa Cum Laude
            $100,000     or     greater       James J. Baxter Founders Circle

 

A list of Visionary Society members, by giving level, is published annually in the NMA member magazine, Driving Freedoms. Those Society members who wish to remain anonymous will have their names withheld from publication upon request.

Your donations to the 501(c)(3) National Motorists Association, EIN 39-1951971, support vital motorist advocacy programs while offering possible tax advantages to you. Your gifts will fund key education, research, and legal aid projects that make our roads safer for everyone, and set important precedents on behalf of motorists.

Your support also enables the NMA to develop influential studies and white-paper reports to educate legislators and public policymakers on issues that affect drivers in their cars, on the streets, and in the courts. As a nonprofit, the NMA is also able to to a limited amount of grassroots lobbying for the same purposes: To promote legislation and regulatory reform favorable to the motoring public.

 

 

Section 2

 

Building Our Future With You!

 

We are pleased to offer the following gifting options that offer potential tax-saving opportunities:

Gifts of Cash: In this day and age, the traditional gift of cash is often overlooked. This is one of the simplest and most effective ways you can support the missions of the NMA.

Gifts of Stocks, Bonds, or other Securities: Your donation of stock, mutual fund shares, treasury bills, certificates of deposit, or bonds can be made directly or be transferred electronically from a mutual fund or brokerage account.

Real Estate: This type of donation may include either appreciated, developed property (such as personal residences, summer homes, farms, ranches, condominiums, and commercial or industrial real estate), or undeveloped land. You may also choose between giving an outright gift and immediate transfer of property, or arrange a retained life estate which allows you to make the gift of a personal residence while retaining the right to live there during your lifetime.

Other Appreciable Personal Property: There are numerous types of personal property that you may consider donating to the NMA. These include boats, works of art, jewelry, and other items of significant value. Computer equipment and office supplies are always useful gifts.

Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD): Those over the age of 72 who hold a traditional IRA account and have a desire to avoid taxable income on the mandatory annual minimum distribution required by the IRS can get a tax break while gifting the NMA. With a QCD, eligible supporters can make a direct-transfer rollover of some or all of the mandatory distribution amount — up to $100,000 per year — to our nonprofit. Such gifts are among the most valuable that we have received.

Life Insurance: Donors are often able to give a great deal more through the gift of a life insurance policy than would otherwise be possible. Such gifts can take several forms — an outright gift of either a paid-up or partially paid policy, a policy that names the NMA as the beneficiary, or an existing policy where the NMA is listed as a contingent beneficiary.

Retirement Plans: If partial or full balances from IRA, 401k, 403 and other retirement plans are properly willed to the NMA, income and estate taxes due at the time of death can be avoided or at least minimized. Your retirement plan can be donated as an outright gift, a traditional bequest, a trust established through the use of retirement plan assets, or you can simply designate the NMA as a beneficiary of your plan.

 

 

Section 3

 

Bequests

 

A bequest is an excellent way for you to perpetuate your support for the National Motorists Association. It would also enable you to make a major gift that might not otherwise be possible. In addition to cash and securities, bequests may include such assets as real estate, vehicles, works of art, antiques and collectibles, and patent rights.

When making or revising a will, you should obtain the assistance of a financial planning professional. Staff at the NMA would be pleased to work with your team to design an estate plan that includes the National Motorists Association and is tailored to your wishes.

How Your Gift Will Benefit You

Your bequest to the NMA provides you with the peace of mind and satisfaction that your support for our shared goals of protecting drivers’ rights will continue on in the future. Also, all outright bequests to the NMA are exempt from federal estate taxes, and there is no limitation on the size of gift that you can make.

Confidential Bequest Form

 

 

Section 4

 

What Your Legacy Will Stand For

 

A planned gift to the National Motorists Association will help ensure that our work that began in 1982 to protect and defend motorists’ rights across North America will carry on for future generations.

The NMA uses its resources to seek out vital motorist causes that can be advanced through well-placed education, research, and legal aid projects. The NMA will also continue its grassroots lobbying, within the limits prescribed for nonprofit organizations, at local, state, and federal levels for legislation and regulatory reform favorable to the driving public.

Your ongoing support of the National Motorists Association will protect and advance the individual rights that must be identified with driving, personal mobility, and unimpeded travel. That requires the establishment of rational traffic laws, honorable enforcement of those laws, and courts that dispense real justice, not predetermined verdicts. There should be no tolerance for public policies that promise or abide aberrations like speed traps, revenue-driven enforcement practices, or intrusive surveillance of motorists.

Our ability to travel when we want, where we want, and how we want is too important to take for granted. With your support, this gift of freedom will be protected for future generations. Among the key issues the NMA will continue advocating in the public forum: