If you wish, you may name Bentley a full, partial, or contingent beneficiary of the final amount remaining in your IRA or other qualified retirement plan. In addition to making a charitable gift meaningful to both you and Bentley, your planning may result in significant estate and income tax benefits. To properly plan your future gift, we encourage you to work with your retirement plan administrator, your advisor(s), and also with us to ensure that your gift is set up and will be used in the way you envision.

Beneficiary Designation Form – You may be able to update your account beneficiaries online or download a form from your plan administrator's website. If neither option is available to you, your account representative would likely be able to let you know how to proceed.
 
Spousal consent – If you participate in certain employer sponsored plans such as a 401(k) or 403(b), your spouse is usually required to be your primary beneficiary unless your spouse waives the right in favor of the charitable organization named. With an IRA, you usually don’t need spousal consent to make a charitable organization a primary beneficiary unless you live in a community property state. We encourage you to contact your financial advisor or plan administrator for advice regarding state requirements
 
Naming Bentley – To name Bentley a beneficiary, kindly use our full legal name: Bentley University, 175 Forest Street, Waltham, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and include our Federal Tax Identification Number, which is 04-1081650. If your plan's beneficiary designation form is unclear as to where a charitable organization may be named as a beneficiary, check with your plan administrator.  
 
A gift for a favorite program – If you wish that your future gift be used for a particular purpose at Bentley, please contact us to let us know so that we can take the appropriate steps to document your intentions in writing. We would love to speak with you to thank you for your plans, to talk about the anticipated future needs of the university to achieve a gift meaningful to both you and Bentley, and to help you put your intentions in writing as space on beneficiary designation forms is often limited.
 
Ensuring Bentley is Notified – Regardless of whether you wish to make your future gift for Bentley's general purposes or for a particular purpose, we ask that you kindly notify us of your plans, including the name of your plan administrator and your account number. We wish to express appreciation to you for your plans, whatever their purpose at Bentley and whatever the amount may be, as well as be aware of them so that when the time comes, we can help to facilitate their distribution to Bentley as you intended. We've learned that retirement plan administrators may not be obliged to notify charitable organizations that they are account beneficiaries, even when the plan administrator has been notified of the passing of the account owner. 
 
We would be happy to provide further information and work with you and your advisors. Please feel free to contact us at 781-891-2475, 781-891-2586, or giftplanning@bentley.edu.