When markets become volatile, donors love to lock in gains with gift annuities. Charities, however, get very nervoous about them. Why?
A Charitable Gift Annuity (CGA) may be funded with unique or hard-to-liquidate assets as well as cash or marketable securities.
Bryan served from 2013-2014 as the Leon L. Levy Fellow in Philanthropy at The American College of Financial Services. He also serves as a Senior Partner to Ekstrom Alley Clontz & Associates – a community foundation consulting firm in New Haven, CT.
Bryan is the founder of the Dechomai Foundation, Inc. and the Dechomai Asset Trust – two national donor advised funds focusing on non-cash assets generally and S-corp transactions respectively. He is also the founder of The Emergency Assistance Foundation, Inc. – a national fund allowing employers to create emergency assistance and disaster relief funds for their employees, where he now serves as secretary and advisor to the president.
In the decade prior to founding Charitable Solutions, LLC in 2003, he served as the director of planned giving for the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, national director of planned giving for Boys & Girls Clubs of America and then as vice president of advancement at The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.
He received a bachelor of science in business administration from the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC; a master’s degree in risk management and insurance from Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA; master’s degree in financial services and Ph.D. in financial and retirement planning from The American College of Financial Services, Bryn Mawr, PA.
From 2000-2005, he served as a graduate adjunct professor for both personal financial planning and life insurance in the Department of Risk Management and Insurance at Georgia State University. He serves on the Editorial Board of the Planned Giving Design Center (2000-current) and on the Advisory Board for the American College’s Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy designation (2001-current).
Previously, he served on the American Council on Gift Annuities’ Rate Recommendation and Research Committee (2003-2010) and the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning (formerly NCPG) Board (2007-2009).
He has given more than 2,000 presentations on charitable gift planning; been published in an international insurance textbook; and written more than two dozen articles in financial services and planned giving journals, including a planned giving manual entitled Just Add Water, which has sold more than 2,500 copies. Bryan chaired the inaugural statewide Leave a Legacy Georgia! campaign.
He is the co-inventor of a proprietary CGA risk management process (LIRMAS- Life Income Risk Management Analytic Suite) based on an actuarial study he co-authored for the Society of Actuaries on CGA Mortality.